


Magic Hour (alternatively, Assorted Short Stories)

by sidnihoudini



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 139
Words: 62,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've been addicted to writing Pinto comment!fic since mid-2010.  This is where I document my slow descent into short story insanity, featuring assorted domestic stories, song fic, and tumblr prompts.  All CP/ZQ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. anyway, my mistake, you spin straw into gold strings

The Ono inspired teenager who got a job at Rockaway Records right out of middle school knows it. Richard, one of the head buyers at Silverlake Wine, he knows it in the same palpable way he does the difference between Pinot Noir and Grigio. There’s a paperback romance novel junkie who heads down to Intelligentsia every day at noon; she probably knows it more than anyone else.

It’s overt, in a slap to the face kind of way, when Zach walks down the sidewalk with a grim look on his face, and Noah’s leash noodled around his hand.

Chris calls him while he’s waiting in line at Y-Que with a late birthday gift he’s finally tracked down for his brother, and then, all of a sudden everyone in Y-Que knows it, too, this droning inclination of love that has Zach hot around the collar as he argues with Chris over the phone for no reason at all.

Things are just so easy to turn sour, these days.

.

Elta was hired at Rockaway Records about two weeks through the summer vacation between middle school and high school. To secure the job she’d flirted with the pierced girl who worked the counter at the time, who, in the grand scheme of things, Elta had replaced in the end, with a flick of the wrist and a little black eyeliner on her upper lid.

She’d met Chris Pine before she’d really realized that it was Chris Pine at all, and, over the few months that followed, before school had even been back in session, had come to be a fly on the wall to the overheard highs and lows of a whirlwind romance that sounded as though it was very quickly lumbering towards that gray area that came right after marriage did.

”I’m just, I’m in love, man,” He had grinned, googly eyes firmly affixed one of the first few times he’d come in to poke around the record racks. He’d been with a friend of his whom Elta doesn’t see around much anymore -- he must have moved out of the area, but at the time they had seemed so close.

The guy had rolled his eyes without much preamble and then looked at Chris sideways, like your mother would. “You’re always in love,” He’d said. He had been the kind of guy that Elta would take advice from; she believed him, then.

Chris had made a vague facial expression and hand gesture, looking blue eyed and red faced, feet glued to the floor in the very affectation of being in the presence of such a looming monster such as love, and then he’d shrugged his shoulders.

He had always kept Elta very curious, after that.

.

The relationship ends for good a couple of weeks after Joe’s birthday.

Zach comes home with the paper, a bag of groceries about to split on the bottom, and a fresh pack of cigarettes. It only takes a second for him to realize that Chris has up and left; the empty cardboard box they’d unpacked the new 52” plasma out of a few weeks ago is suddenly missing from the back porch recycling bin.

So, he throws the newspaper against the wall over the sink, startles Noah into choking his kibble all over the tile when he accidentally knocks the bag of groceries off of the counter, and then sits in a corner chair in the living room, smoking the first half of his cigarettes.

When a looming cloud of smoke begins to hang down a good foot below the ceiling, he decides to relocate with the last half pack, peering through the back door and out into the mysterious sunlight of outside.

How can things be so normal when his moronic other half has decided to leave him, leave them?

The neighbor looks at him mysteriously from the next yard over, watching as he strikes three matches before one actually lights. Zach glowers at him as best he can in the broken open, split apart heart culmination of the biggest love of his life, and, after a few moments of thinking about this, flicks his cigarette butt against the concrete.

It bounces twice, and quickly settles between a crack in the pavement.

.

A year into the relationship, Zach’s washing machine had gone berserk and flooded his basement with six and a half inches of water.

Chris had left his shoes upstairs in the kitchen, rolled his jeans up to his shins, and waded around in the back pipe water for half an hour, searching for the water main while Zach flipped through the yellow pages from his perch on the stairs, Noah sitting a step above him, watching as Chris fished around in the gummy water.

After the call was made and there was an appointment for the plumber to come the next day, they’d lugged two of Zach’s jersey bags stuffed full of dirty laundry three blocks west, to the corner of Rowena and Hyperion. Zach had driven one of his girlfriends there once, to spy on her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, and then had provided the moral support after, over a round of martinis at Barbarella.

Zach had regaled the story to Chris as they tried to tug the wedged in laundry bags out of the car trunk; the only other people in the parking lot had been a few lingering hipsters, and an older couple driving a Cadillac who had stopped to kiss in parking spot D.

Inside, Sandra, thirty-something with an untamable mane, had been sitting atop one of the rumbling dryers with her nose in a paperback when they’d managed to bumble through the front doors, each carrying an oversized, awkward bag of laundry.

She’d peered over the edges of the well read paper despite herself.

”Would you help me,” Chris garbled, mouth pressed against the fabric of the bag before he accidentally fumbled it and it rolled to the floor, landing with the dull thump of a dead body against the scuffed tiles.

Around them, the whirl of the laundromat rolled on, people with their glasses fallen down to the very tips of their noses far too caught up in feeding quarters and pink liquid soap into their designated machines to care.

”What are you doing? Oh my god,” Zach had intoned, trying to reach down to pull the bag back up with one hand. Chris glared at him a little from the corners of his eyes, looking partially winded, and very close to thundering down the dangerous slope of weariness.

Sandra’s machine buzzed, killing the steady rumbling underneath her, but before jumping down off of the machine, she’d stolen one last glance at Chris, standing halfway between the door and the first machine with two overstuffed bags at his feet, Zach gone to try and find a laundry cart. He had seemed so overwhelmed, pink high in his cheeks, with irritation dead set in the line of his shoulders.

The little things.

But that had been it, the last look, because by the time she’d slid back down to the floor, and turned around to pop the machine door open, he’d disappeared. Whisked away in a flurry of a laundry cart, and Zach’s unwillingness to compete for one of the newer machines.

She hadn’t known it, but she had been sole witness to the first day in a long line of last days that would inevitably end up being the thundering, bolt shaking steady demise of two people who, otherwise, had cared for each other just too much.

.

Three photographers are waiting for Chris outside of LAMILL a day after he leaves Zach.

With a sour, steady look pulling his face in three different directions – he doesn’t know which card to play today that will get studious yet recovering across, but then he realizes that they don’t know about Zach, nobody will ever know about what happens with Zach – he crosses the street, tugging the hem of his neckline away from his throat.

They follow him, one snap for every foot Chris plants on the ground, and, in the middle of the street he realizes, it wasn’t always like this here.

.

The thing about real love, Zach thinks, as he thumbs Chris’ phone number into his cellphone, is that it makes you do funny things. Things you wouldn’t ever do to another person, especially with your pride on the line.

Below him, Noah sniffs along the line of the sidewalk, searching for that perfect spot that no other dog has found before him, and in doing so tugs Zach a few steps down, towards a seemingly promising fence post.

The thing about love, is –

“This neighborhood isn’t the same without you,” He tells Chris’ voicemail, squinting up into the bright sky, and then looking down as Noah stops sniffing one spot to abruptly sniff the other. “If you snuck off in the middle of the night to teach me a lesson, that’s… well. There isn’t anything else better than you, so just… gimme a call back, sometime.”

The thing about love is that you can’t live without it once you find that one good drip, you can’t live without it even if you try.

.

Three months into their relationship, namely, halfway through that breathless, dizzy phase that always left Chris with a slight sense of vertigo and no ammo to do anything about it with, they’d ordered a bottle of wine at Café Stella, and, in the warm pocket of a neighborhood that had not truly been theirs until recently, Zach rubbed his hand across his forehead and said, carefully, “I’m pretty sure the entire city of Los Angeles conspired to help me find you.”

Chris had laughed suddenly, loud and awkward enough for the few other patrons around them to turn with a slight air to their head as Zach grinned, slow and sure in this wicked way that spread from one corner of his mouth to the other. He had just left Chris sitting there, staring back, wide-eyed and boggled.

”How do you figure that?” He’d finally thought to ask, unable to do anything other than slump back in his seat, and watch the way Zach was still grinning back at him, like there was a secret in the air that Chris was suddenly very close to finding out.

Like Zach had only been waiting for Chris to catch up this whole time.

”Not a decent house to buy in Los Feliz,” He’d begun, raising his eyebrows a little at Chris over their table top. “Echo Park, not for me. Mount Washington is full of yuppies, and I don’t get the whole Glassell Park craftsman thing.”

Unable to help it, Chris’ mouth had dropped open a little further in wonder as he raised his eyebrows, voice a little pitchy as he’d replied, “That’s all, huh?”

”This Silverlake thing? Just call it a hunch,” Zach shrugged, mouth still turning up at the corners, as Chris laughed again, softer this time, and ran a hand through his hair, breathless.

.

“Sorry,” Chris tells Zach later that night, when Zach opens the front door to find Chris standing on the stoop, with a six pack of Coronas in one hand and a bag of take out food in the other.

The porch light wobbles in the dark when Chris drops everything accidentally, arms automatically coming up as a reaction of Zach taking a step towards him. The beer drops flat, hard, and fast, landing with a sharp smack against the stoop, but the food hits the step first and then spills in slow motion, walking itself down the stairs and onto the path leading up to the front door.

Same path Chris has walked many times, with Zach and without him.

”Me too,” Zach replies, voice sounding rough as he hugs back. It isn’t until Chris opens his eyes again that he realizes he had closed them, so he digs his fingers into the warmth of Zach’s back a little harder.

Mouth set in a hard line flat against the curve of Chris’ shoulder, Zach hugs back, tight, with his eyes out towards the road, the rolling, active span of the neighborhood sprawling out from the end of Zach’s yard.

“Come inside,” Zach says, finally, after a few quiet moments of standing there in the dim light of the porch, poorly wired light buzzing overhead.

Chris watches his face for a moment, curious at the intensity so obviously there, before he nods, an accidental smile twitching across his lips as he reaches up to scratch the back of his neck, as he says, “Yeah, okay.”


	2. banned from the back porch

Chris’ cellphone vibrates across the table, wobbles at the edge, and promptly falls to the floor, bouncing twice before landing on top of last night’s jeans.

Snorting, Chris rubs a hand over his face, turns from one shoulder to the other, and promptly falls back asleep.

.

”He’s not picking up,” Zach bitches, punching the number into the pay phone with his thumb one more time. The cop is standing behind him, arms crossed over his chest, breathing loudly. Zach eyes him over his shoulder. “It doesn’t count as one phone call until the person picks up.”

The cop shifts his weight from one foot to the other, “You wanna challenge me, boy?”

”What I want is for my – Chris!”

.

”You phoned me a million times,” Chris grumbles into his phone, eyes still mostly closed as he rubs at his eye with the palm of one hand. Yawning, he exhales loudly into the receiver, and then says, skeptically, “I thought you were getting breakfast.”

There’s a shuffle, and then a pause, so Chris yawns again, into the back of his hand.

”I got pulled over for a speeding ticket,” Zach says after a second, sounding half pissed off, and half beat down. “Now I’m in jail.”

Chris starts choking accidentally, he swallows the wrong way or something out of his surprise, and then all of a sudden he’s coughing and trying to catch his breath.

”Calm down,” Zach offers, belatedly, still sounding annoyed.

Switching the phone from one ear to the other, Chris throws the blankets off of his lap, and reaches across the bed for his t-shirt.

”What did you do?” He asks, holding the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he pulls the t-shirt over his head. It’s wrinkled to hell and has some of last night’s dinner on it, but at least he isn’t the one in jail.

Zach says ‘yeah I am’ to someone who isn’t Chris, then there’s a shuffle and Zach talks into the phone, saying, “They’re telling me to hurry up, I’ll explain later, but they won’t let me post my own bail.”

”Jesus,” Chris murmurs, and for all intents and purposes, facepalms.

Sighing, Zach says, “Just come down here, please? I’m at the station on San Fernando.”

”I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Chris replies, scratching the back of his head. Now he isn’t even going to get time for a shower. Frowning into the sunlight coming in the window over Zach’s bed, Chris asks, “Are you okay?... Zach?”

Zach is still there, but he’s talking to somebody who isn’t Chris again. Running a hand through his hair, Chris listens as there’s shuffling, the sound of the phone landing on something, and then the silence of a dead line.

”Great,” He sighs, unceremoniously heaving himself out of the bed.

Shuffling across the carpet, Chris picks up last night’s sweatpants, and shakes them out before he leans against the doorframe to pull them on one leg at a time. He even manages to remember to brush his teeth before pulling on a hoodie, and picking up his own car keys before he leaves.

Zach is just going to have to suck it up and adjust to prison life while Chris gets his coffee, though.

.

”You Hollywood boys,” The cop says to him, shaking his head like Zach is this huge burden on the world. “You’re lucky I don’t take you in for sassing a police officer.”

Zach bites his tongue, literally bites his tongue as he sits in his holding cell. There’s a drunk old lady asleep on the cot across from him, murmuring under her breath and jerking like Noah does when he’s dreaming.

He hardly thinks going fifty miles over the speed limit counts as reckless endangerment, but there you have it.

Anyways, the $5,000 bail and $400 ticket are going to be nothing compared to the endless litany of jokes and stories Chris will have free range on for the next, oh, ten years.

.

There’s a photographer at the end of the street when Chris comes out of LAMILL, which is awesome. Still half asleep he shuffles along, coffee in one hand, and car keys in the other.

Grimacing, he steps down off of the sidewalk, and cuts across the street to his car. 

.

When he gets to the Northeast cop shop, there’s a tow truck with Zach’s car attached to the back parked around the side. Laughing despite himself, Chris parks in the spot closest to the doors, tries to look in the windows from his car seat, and then finally cracks his door open, grabbing his coffee and keys before he climbs out.

Jogging up the stairs of the police station, Chris holds the front doors open for a mousy looking secretary carrying two legal sized file boxes, and glances over his shoulder at the street. It doesn’t look like the photographer followed him, at least.

”Hi,” He greets the first woman sitting behind a desk he sees. “I’m here to post someone’s bail.”

She’s middle aged and looks pretty conservative, but she still smirks up at Chris from behind her bullet proof glass. Chris figures she’s smarter than she looks.

”What is the last name of the persons being held?” She asks, reaching for her computer mouse, both eyes rolling up to look at Chris, standing there like a dumb shit in his slippers and Sonoma Outfitters fleece.

Chris leans forward a little, jingling his car keys. “Quinto.”

”Let me just pull his file up…” She says, sounding like she’s mostly talking to herself as she clicks around on her computer, reaching forward to type a few things in.

Eyes wandering around the office, he tries to lean back and see through to where all the officers desks are. He wonders if it’s like the movies, and Zach is actually in a cell.

”Okay, so it looks like he’s being held for reckless driving. He was going eight five in a thirty five zone,” Her eyes trail down over the screen, and she clicks again. “His bail is set at five thousand dollars.”

Grimacing, Chris balances his coffee between his forearm and chest, and pulls his wallet out.

.

A police officer accompanies Zach back into the lobby, where Chris has been sitting on an uncomfortable chair for twenty minutes, playing Brickbreaker on his phone.

When the door swings open, Chris glances up, used to a parade of drunk and crazy people going back and forth, but sees Zach instead, looking pissed off and ruffled. A slow grin creeps across Chris’ face as he forgets about his game, and uncrosses his legs instead.

”He’s got your possessions,” The cop tells Zach, reading over a clipboard he’s holding in one of his awkwardly thick hands. “Your court date is set for a week Tuesday, if they find you innocent you’ll get your bail amount back.”

Zach accepts a sheet of information and his speeding ticket the officer hands him, and, wordlessly, folds them both into sixths, and jams them into the pocket of his hoodie.

”Think I’ll find breakfast in here?” Chris asks, unable to not grin as he holds up Zach’s see through plastic bag of possessions: his wallet, iPhone, car keys, sunglasses, lighter, and half pack of Marlboros.

Grimacing, Zach reaches for the bag, and says, “Not one word.”

.

They actually do go to Square One, even though it’s for lunch since they stopped serving breakfast two hours ago.

”So,” Chris smirks at Zach over his steak sandwich. “How was life in the big house?”

Zach starts to frown, but then laughs instead, groaning as he leans back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. Chris’ smirk is wavering dangerously and threatening to split into a full fledged grin as Zach looks back up at him, obviously relieved.

”Definitely not as gay as I thought it would be,” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. Chris laughs, shaking his head and hunching forward to begin picking over his yam fries. When Zach doesn’t continue, Chris looks back up and over, raising one eyebrow at the sudden silence. Zach is staring back, regarding him carefully, and just as Chris thinks he’s going to say something meaningful or heartfelt, his mouth cracks into a half grin and he says, “You would definitely not make it past dinner.”

Chris raises his eyebrows and pops a fry into his mouth, voice sardonic as he says, “Lemme guess, they’d eat me for dinner.”

”I’ll eat you for dinner,” Zach says, mindlessly, reaching for his fork.

Laughing again, Chris shakes his head, and settles back in the chair.


	3. i use a cobra snake for a neck tie

“You wanna know why I’m yelling?” Chris yells into the trunk of the car, as he unceremoniously rips another bag wide open and begins to rummage around the contents inside.

Forty minutes isn’t that long, really. Long enough to watch an episode of TV, sure, maybe make a nice dinner for two, he’d give you that as well. But by all means, forty minutes is now proven just long enough to get into a death match with your significant other in the middle of the Nevada desert, as well.

Zach responds from somewhere nearer the front of the car, but it’s drowned out by the sound of Chris grumbling to himself and digging through the bags he’s searching through, and then, finally, the last straw snaps and Chris really loses it.

He really thought he was better practiced in controlling his temper, but when the sunglasses earlier balanced on the top of his head slide back down onto his nose, he cracks, yanking them off of his face and whole-heartedly throwing them back into the car.

Chris is pretty sure he hears them hit windshield.

“I’m gonna hear it anyway,” Zach is still arguing, as he thunders around his side of the car with a piece of the broken car jack in one hand, and a now useless wrench in the other. He’s sweating, they both are, and has oil all over his hands, and sand pressed into the skin of both his bare knees. “So you might as well just tell me, so we can get it over with.”

With that, he storms back around to the front of the car and directly over to his right wheel well, which is also currently wheel-less, and making the car sit off of its bearings.

Hey, Zach had thought, when they were still at home in Silver Lake and about to depart on the great two day double state road trip of 2010. I have a great idea. I’ll go into this prepared, and take the road kit that has otherwise been sitting in the garage for two years.

Which, you know, would have kept the world on its axis and the universe in line with itself if the car jack hadn’t already been broken. Maybe it would have made sense to pack something that took up half of his trunk, then.

“I’m busting my ass in the middle of the goddamned desert,” Chris bellows, slamming the trunk closed with both hands, and thereby making the entire car bounce unevenly on the dirt road they’d pulled halfway off of as he squints into the bright sun, and then storms around the side of the car after Zach. “Trying to help you change the tire that the mechanic said wouldn’t get us out of Glendale, and you’re bitching at me because I forgot to tell you I broke the jack six months ago.” 

Zach wipes the sweat off of his forehead and glares up from where he’s resumed his kneeling position, one knee balanced against the ground as he tries in vain to jostle the broken jack back into just working. It hadn’t been broken enough to not work when they were taking the wheel off.

“If you’re going to be this belligerent, you can call yourself a fucking dune taxi,” Zach snaps, and, you know, if either of them were any less angry with the other, they’d both realize that it makes absolutely no sense on the scale of Sense, but, they are, so they don’t.

Scowling down at Zach, actually resisting the urge to kick a big foot full of sand right into his face, Chris settles for balling his fists at his sides, grumbling a warning under his breath, and storming right back to the car.

Zach watches in exasperation as Chris drops himself down into the passenger side hard, hard enough to jostle the half assed rig Zach had going with the broken jack, and then reaches across the interior to turn the ignition over, flip the radio on, and turn the volume up loud – loud enough for the entire car to start vibrating with bass.

Grumbling under his breath, Zach goes back to his car jack, pulling the bottom of his tank top up to wipe his face off as he fumbles with the broken tool, and finally just gives up, dropping forward to bang his head against the roundest part of the car bumper a couple times.

.

After a while, he lays starfish on the road in front of the car until the sun bakes him right through and he’s pretty sure he’s successfully given himself heatstroke. Chris has listened to a half an hour of talk radio at maximum volume, half an hour of the techno-party station he knows Zach hates more than anything else, and has finally settled on an indie shit-show station, which is also currently playing its third Bloc Party song in forty five minutes.

Zach grimaces into the sun, and halfheartedly pushes himself up onto his elbows. The sand digs in and pinches at the rough skin there, so he shifts, tilting his head forward to eye the flat wheel laying a foot and a half away from his car.

Sighing, he sits up properly, and arranges himself to look out over the desert. So much for getting away for a weekend. He’s sure Chris’ friend is right, and that the drive from California through to Nevada is gorgeous, but he’s also pretty sure that isn’t going to be something that he sees for himself anytime soon.

“Chris,” Zach tries to shout at the car, but he knows it’s useless. The radio drowns him out as effectively as Chris straight-out ignoring him would have.

Climbing to his feet, Zach stands up and starts making his way over to the car, brushing off the back of his shorts and shaking the sand out of his shirt.

Upon his arrival he sees that his supposedly better other half has his knees bent up, feet against the dash in front of him, with his seat tipped back as far as it will go. And, most notably, he’s completely asleep. 

Zach frowns and knocks on the window. Chris is pretty red, he’s sweating, and it looks like he’s been more successful in the heatstroke department than Zach himself was. Sighing, Zach reaches down and tries the door – unsurprisingly, it’s locked.

“Chris.” He tries the window again, knocking a little harder.

On the best mornings it takes three or four rounds to rouse Chris from his bear-like slumber anyways, but apparently the muggy heat has added to his ability to completely go into hibernation, and it takes a good combination of banging against the glass alternated with pushing the car up and down on its (three) wheels to successfully wake him up.

Chris shakes his head and then lifts his chin, eyes bleary as he immediately looks over into the driver’s seat, becomes confused enough for Zach to recognize it on his face, and then turns to look out the passenger side window. For a second Zach can also tell that the confusion is carrying on through his waking hours, until his memory snaps to the forefront and the little shroud of annoyance falls back across his face.

A real pro at being completely infuriating when he wants to be, Chris does not lean over to unlock Zach’s door, nor does he unlock his own. Instead, he unsticks himself from the seat and reaches forward, powering his window down.

“Do you even know what a dune taxi is?” Chris asks through the three inch crack he provided himself, voice sleepy and eyes narrowing to glare up at Zach in the way that only Chris and his three year old godchild have ever managed to do.

Zach groans and then laughs a little, bringing one hand up to scrub over his face.

“I was mad,” He says, which is the obvious. “And it came out before I could stop it.”

That seems to be an answer sufficient enough for Chris, as the locks flick down automatically, and Chris goes back to relaxing against his seat, pausing before he leans forward once more to dig around in the bag of bottled water and assorted road snacks they’ve been building a surplus of between his feet. 

Zach unceremoniously walks around the front of the car, opens his door, and drops himself down onto the seat.

“Surprise me,” He sighs, one leg still hanging out of the car as he holds his hand out, palm up, for Chris to bestow a snack upon. “Before I call a mechanic and bribe him with enough granola to last him into July, and possibly some of your virtue.”

Chris has already got a handful of something in his mouth as he hands over something else that warns it may contain nuts, followed by a single piece of black licorice, and a bottle of water.

“I don’t have any virtue,” He garbles through his food, settling back in his seat again as Zach accepts the food and almost drops the water. Chris inhales to say something else, but ends up sucking back a nut or grain or something and then starts choking instead, coughing until he’s red-faced and tangled in his seat belt.

Zach, who had otherwise been sitting there watching the event silently, swallows the mouthful of granola bar, cracks the lid off of his water bottle, studies the red cast across Chris’ gross, desert sweaty face, and says, voice casual, “I love you.”

”Augh,” Chris manages, flapping one hand around as he bends forward at the waist to cough again, almost banging his head on the dashboard he will never stop complaining is too close.

Smiling into the curve of his knuckles, Zach turns to look back out of the front window, at the desert sprawled in front of them, the assorted things laying in the sand that Chris had earlier thrown from the car in his fit of rage.

He’ll call roadside assistance in a few minutes, but, for now, he’s willing to just sit here, in the muggy heat of Nevada, with his bottle of water that tastes like warm plastic, and his stupid boyfriend in the passenger seat who happens to the cause of all of his problems, but, alternatively, the solution to most of them, too.


	4. one million motherfuckers in the u s of a with bad farmers tan and vericose veins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris/Zach or Trek RPF gen
> 
> The cast is gathering at a beach house for the weekend and Chris gets all self-conscious about how pale he is, leading to... CHRIS PINE'S TANNING DISASTER!

An hour after he gets what he had earlier assumed was the greatest idea of his life, Chris stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, fish-mouthing.

“Oh my God,” He finally says, staring back at his reflection.

The salon assistant, this four foot nothing girl who was wearing a bathing suit when he had first stepped into the salon (first warning signs, Chris sighs to himself, now) grins at him from where she’s leaning against the doorframe, and pops her gum.

“Looks good, huh?” She asks him, and Chris watches, staggered, as she trails her eyes down his reflection, gaze stopping crotch level.

He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

Clearly his brain is working overtime as it takes in his pylon-colored reflection, staring him right back from the mirror.

.

“Fifteen bucks,” She chirps five minutes later, as Chris staggers out of the tanning room in sweatpants and a t-shirt that does absolutely nothing to camouflage the bright orange cast of his skin.

He catches his reflection in a mirror again as he starts over towards the front desk, and grimaces, trying to not notice the way his eyebrows look dirty against the tone of his forehead – how his cheeks are a completely different, deeper color than the rest of him altogether.

“Credit,” He says, stepping up to the counter.

Cracking her gum again, the girl accepts the VISA he pulls out of his wallet, and slides it through the credit authorization, leaning against the desk with one hip as she waits, studying Chris and chewing loudly in the meantime.

“That tone looks so good,” She says reverently, voice lowering as anyone else would say extraordinary or fabulous. “And just so you know, we totally have these new dermabrasion treatments. You could get rid of your scars and your freckles.”

Chris is totally lost for words for a hot moment, as she grins at him, wrinkling up her nose and ripping the receipt out of the machine. It isn’t until she’s laying the signature strip down on the counter and handing Chris a pen that says SUNSHINE TANNING with a little smiling sun on it that he jerks back to life.

”I’ll keep that in mind,” He manages, accepting the pen as she studies both sides of his credit card, snapping her gum twice in the time it takes for him to scribble CPINE along the dotted line.

Jesus, Zach is going to kill him. 

.

“Oh my god.”

“I know. I know. I just – ”

“Oh my god.”

”Zach, seriously, stop with the – ”

“Zoe is going to eat you alive,” Zach finally cracks, trying to hide his laughter with one hand as he openly boggles at Chris’ disaster. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Chris feels the flip switch of justification, and says, “I didn’t want to burn.”

”You’re lying.” Now Zach is completely entertained as he stands there in his dumb linen shirt he bought the afternoon before, bony legs sticking out of his board shorts. Chris frowns. “I can’t fuck you like this. I’d be committing… oh my god, it would be some kind of disgusting kink.”

Stomach heating up with irritation, Chris leans forward and yanks his beach towel off of their bed, balling it up into a miniature globe with both hands before he starts toward the little en suite bathroom.

“Forget it,” He yells at the bathroom wall as he walks in, fully ignoring the muted sounds of Zach still laughing in the other room. “You’re supposed to be helping me, Zach, I look like a fucking… a fucking…”

He trails off, staring at himself in the huge slab of mirror over the double sinks, his eyes three times as bright as they usually are. Aren’t blue and orange opposite on the color wheel? Mortal color enemies, almost?

”I have a couple of cousins who would really like you,” Zach says, appearing in the doorway with that same trying-to-hide-it grin on his face as Chris stands there, holding his towel as he thinks about the color wheel.

Looking over, Chris grimaces at the thought of the specific branch off the Quinto family tree that Zach is referring: guido hair, cheap gold chains, V necks five inches too low for any self respecting man to wear, and an entire memory card filled with photos of duck lips and ridiculous gang signs.

”I’ll kill you,” He finally settles for, glaring at Zach.

The expression immediately sends Zach into another fit of laughter that bursts and trails off two, three times before finally tapering into a, still giggled through, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, come on. Let me help.” 

.

They crack open the gift set sitting on the bathroom counter and scrub Chris down with every exfoliating product they can find there within. By the time he staggers out of the shower, his skin is not only bright orange, but now red as well, and Zach’s hands are wrinkly from too much water, and sore from scrubbing.

“It’s a little better,” Zach manages, trying not to look directly at the terrible color and random darker patches littering Chris’ body.

Chris looks at himself in the mirror.

If possible, it looks even worse than before.

.

“Finally!” Zoe calls up to the balcony, as Zach and Chris slide the glass doors open and step through, Zach grinning all too wide as he balances their box of beer in one arm and a plate of yet uncooked red meat in the other.

Everyone else gathered around looks up when Zoe yells, eyebrows raising over the line of their sunglasses when they trail past Zach and to Chris instead.

“Holy fuck,” Karl starts laughing, almost dropping his drink.

At that Zoe stands up a little straighter and pulls her sunglasses off, blocking the sun with one hand as she looks up at the balcony.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” He calls down, and then, unceremoniously, starts along after Zach, who is already descending the stairs.

That bitch, leaving his outrageously colored boyfriend right out in the open like that, where even the neighbors can see him. Chris is never going to refer to him as a “gentleman” to anyone ever again. 

“You look like… like…” Now Zoe is gaping, completely horrified as Zach reaches the ground and steps down into it, immediately wedging his flip flop in the sand.

As he’s trying to shake his foot out, he looks up and asks, “Like Neal, right?”

”Oh my god.” Zoe has gone from being mortified to gently amused. “Oh my god, Chris, you do, you look like his cousin”

Chris storms past Zach, sand flying everywhere, mostly from him kicking it.

”Thank you,” He grumbles, storming right over to Karl.

Karl looks up from where he’s reclined in one of the low plastic beach chairs, a floppy straw hat on his head, fruity drink in his hand, and open-mouthed gape on his face. He raises his eyebrows and asks incredulously, “Can I help you?”

”You can make me a drink,” Chris starts, kicking out a dip in the sand he can settle his ass in, and not get a rock jabbing him. “And you can give me your hat.”

.

Keith lugs his surfboard back up onto the turf, feet sinking into the wet sand as he wanders back to where they had earlier set up camp behind the beach house, each chair well within reach of a cooler or the cooker.

“Don’t say anything,” Zach warns him as soon as it gets within earshot, but the expression on his face is less ‘helpful significant other’ and more ‘please say something, and make it hilarious.’

Raising his eyebrows, Keith looks around the group of people sitting around the fire pit – Karl with his broken sunglasses, Zoe and her new bathing suit, Zoe’s girlfriend who he can never properly remember the name of, Chris and his…

Really, really terrible tan.

“Wow,” Keith says without meaning to, which sends everyone into helpless peels of laughter.

Chris studiously ignores him, instead choosing to take the high road. He raises his eyebrows and tugs the straw hat lower over his face with one hand, lifting his drink up to his mouth with the other.

“How do you like your steak, man?” Zach calls over from where he’s got two massive slabs of meat hanging from two forks.

Keith manages to look away from Chris long enough to dig his board into the sand, and secure a beer from the cooler. 

.

Four hours later, Chris is drunk with what Zoe refers to as “trying to cope,” and Zach is trying to get him back up the stairs.

“Maybe it could be worse!” Chris is rambling, completely dead-boned as Zach starts breathing heavy with exertion, taking a second to lean against the railing and gain some energy back.

The smoking since he moved to LA thing has really lowered his stamina.

“Maybe I could be…” Chris trails off, almost losing his hat off the back of his head as he swings his gaze around, looking over Zach’s head as Zach makes a grab for the hat, and slams it back down, securing it firmly around Chris’ skull. “I could be too hairy.”

Zach is pretty sure there’s a little bit of not so hidden antagonism in the statement, but he is way too out of breath and a little tipsy himself to be dealing with this.

”If you don’t move your feet,” He says calmly, modulating his voice with a certain serenity that never fails to get his point across to wasted Chris. “I’m going to tip you over the railing, walk upstairs by myself, and go to bed.”

For one second Chris is completely silent, as he stares at Zach’s face and takes the words in, weighing them all over carefully in his mind.

“Okay,” He finally decides, taking most of his weight back onto both feet as he lets go of Zach’s shoulder and starts up on his own, one hand braced against the step in front of him, the other sliding along up the railing.

Sighing with relief, Zach starts up behind him, steadying him with one hand when he needs it, and picking up his hat when he drops it.

Overall, he decides, Chris is a ridiculous human being.

He’s more than content to just leave it at that.


	5. well it's a struggle, living like a good boy oughta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based on the prompt a few above:
> 
> five times zach is drunk on a flight and one time he isn't.
> 
> zach/chris, or zach/multiple people gen :)

1.

“What?” He blurts, standing in the aisle with his pants down around his knees, hips pushed out belligerently. “Does the male anatomy make you uncomfortable?”

A flight attendant with a Still in Training badge over her left breast stands in front of him, mouth a little open and expression agog as she watches the way Zach sways on both feet, grimace on his face as he hits his head on the overhead compartment bin.

“Sir, if you’ll just…” When they told her she’d be assisting ‘VIP travelers’ and ‘celebrities’ all the time, this isn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.

She reaches forward when he staggers backwards, and promptly falls into his own seat, his pants falling right down to his ankles as he glares up at her, unscathed.

”I’m going to report this airline,” He babbles at her, reaching for the Jack and Coke they should have stopped serving him an hour ago. “And then what?”

Opening her mouth to reply, she hesitates as she realizes she has no idea how to answer that.

“I’ll get you a hot towel,” She says instead, and then hurries off, hoping to bump into security along the way. 

.

2.

“Do you always do this when you fly?” Hayden asks him, trying to wipe the spilled drink out of his pants with a cocktail napkin. “And if you do, are you always this sloppy?”

Zach says something incomprehensible, and then grumbles to himself and spits, “I despise flying. I had a panic attack in Michigan,” before hiccupping.

”Uh huh,” She nods, folding the napkin in half, and dabbing at the inseam over his crotch. “You know you can probably get Ativan for that?”

He grumbles again and then pushes her hands away, letting the napkin float through the air and fall into the aisle as he reaches for his drink and tabloid magazine.

“You’re a know it all,” Zach accuses her, pivoting at the hip in his seat to level her with a glare. “Did you know that?”

It’s pretty hard to keep a straight face at the look Zach is giving her, but Hayden is nothing if not professional, so she does, and then nods, tapping the front cover of his magazine to distract him.

Kate vs. Jon: It’s On, Say Friends.

“I try,” She tells him, and the reaches for her own half peach juice, half water. “Try my drink, though. It’s really good.”

He keeps one stink-eye on her as he accepts the glass, sniffing it before he takes a sip, and then sits back, sinking into his rag, cover to cover.

Note to self: never fly with someone who’s name rhymes with Smackhery Hinto, she texts to Kristen, eyeing Zach from the corner of her eye the whole time.

After half an hour he falls asleep, magazine dropping to the floor as his head stoops back against his seat.

Hayden manages to catch her glass before that rolls to the floor, as well. 

.

3.

“You know,” Joe tells him, as they sit side by side at the airport bar, Joe with a glass of water in front of him, and Zach with his second glass of wine. “It might be time to reassess the way you feel about flying.”

Zach gives him a disgruntled look as he takes swigs the last dregs of his wine, and holds one hand up for another glass.

”It might be time to think about how big of a jackass you are,” He says under his breath, as the bartender slides another stem glass onto the bar top, letting it coast towards Zachary before he lets go.

Joe frowns and replies, “You’re such a bitch, sometimes.”

”Yeah, well,” Zach sighs, taking the first sip from his third round. “You’re a pain in my ass, so I guess we’re even.” 

.

4.

He and Tyler are “stranded” (read: stoned) in a New York snowstorm when they get this brilliant idea to shoot a piece in Malibu, so, after booking a next day flight online, Zach wakes up the following morning in a puddle of his own drool, with Tyler’s face rested in the arch of his bare foot.

“I prepaid with my credit card, man,” Tyler tells him forty minutes later, his expression wounded at Zach’s very suggestion that they don’t go. “And I can’t get a full refund. We have to go.”

Which is how Zach ends up completely wasted on shots of tequila just as they cross the border into California, and how he remains locked in the on-flight bathroom throwing up the remnants of last night’s dinner while everyone else saunters off into the Californian sunset.

“Maybe next time you should take it a little slower,” Tyler suggests, a little drunk himself as he tries to lead Zach down the tarmac one-armed half an hour later.

Zach, always a little bitey when drunk, snaps, “Maybe you should shut the hell up.” 

.

5.

The first flight they go on for the Star Trek premiere circuit is back from Los Angeles to New York. Despite his better judgment, Zach winds up wedged in-between Chris and Zoe, who have both been ordering virgin drinks the entire flight.

Which lifted off approximately five minutes ago.

“I’ll have an orange juice,” Zach tells the attendant, when she pushes her little cart past, loaded down with apple juice and bagged peanuts. She smiles down at him and nods, and just as she reaches for a little single serving juice box, Zach adds, “Can I get a double of vodka in that, too?”

Her hand is still in mid air when she glances down at him and says, “We only serve singles.”

”Can I get two, then?” He pauses when he realizes Zoe and Chris have stopped arguing about eighties cartoons over his lap. Zach gives the attendant a big, grimacing smile, and then adds, “Please?”

Nodding, she glances down at him once more before toodling off, promising to bring Zach’s drinks back as soon as possible.

Zach settles back into his seat, and successfully ignores the looks Chris and Zoe are giving him from both sides.

At least until his drinks arrive, and then he can’t stop talking. 

.

+1.

Somewhere over Utah, Chris thumps his head against the emergency overhead compartment, and Zach pinches his finger in the door after it accidentally unlocks and swings open a couple of inches.

”Jesus,” Chris pants, bumping his head again as Zach sinks into him over and over, going treacherously slow for someone who had been so quick to get Chris’ pants off and have him bent over the six-by-six inch sink. “Christ.”

Zach pumps into him again, his fingers digging into the soft flesh at the front of Chris’ hips as he mouths at the back of Chris’ neck, teeth scraping against the skin there as they both stumble forward a few inches when the plane lurches in the air suddenly.

”Come on, come on,” Chris breathes, reaching back to slap the flank of Zach’s side before tugging him forward by the back of his thigh. “We’re going to land before we fucking come.”

Laughing, mouth twisting up into this delicious grin as Zach rolls his hips forward and knocks all of the complaints right outta Chris with one thrust, they both groan low and stumble forwards again, Chris bracing them both against the edge of the sink.

”You said I didn’t need to order a drink,” Zach murmurs into the back of his skull, head lolling forward to rest against the curviest part of Chris’ shoulder blade. “This is what you get.”

Chris groans again, fingers tightening the hold they have at the edge of the small sink, and pushes back, fully planning to ignore the light knocking that has already started on the other side of the bathroom door.


	6. hearts are on sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oooooh.
> 
> I was listening to a song earlier that struck me as so very Pinto, so here's the lyric that got me:
> 
> I don't want your body  
> I want, I want, I want everything  
> No more compromising  
> I want, I want, I want everything

“Here’s the thing,” Chris announces to the lower end of Zach’s residence, closing the unlocked french door behind him as he slips into the kitchen.

Understandably, Zach jerks in surprise, and almost cracks an egg before he manages to get it above the frying pan.

“Oh my god,” He intones, recovering fast enough for a guy otherwise standing there in striped pajama pants and a wife beater as he rolls his eyes, and then shakes his head, turning one shoulder to mostly ignore Chris’ presence. “If you’re angry about something, it’s way too early for me to be dealing with you right now.”

“No, no, listen,” Chris insists, and oh god when Zach spares him a glance over the shoulder he can see what he’s wearing, this ill-fitting sweater and jeans that look like they might actually be on backwards. “Here’s the thing. I love you.”

Making a face, Zach slides the pile of scrambled egg white from the pan and onto his plate, side-steps Noah waiting at his feet for fatalities, and glances over at Chris once more, quickly.

”I know,” He answers, like Chris has just told him _you spend too much on hair product per month to be financially viable or hey, you have something on your face_. It makes him twitchy and a little self conscious, and as he picks up his plate of eggs, he watches Chris frown and run a tense hand through his hair. “You know I love you, too? Do you want some eggs?”

Zach raises an eyebrow, and, as an afterthought, holds out the carton of eggs.

”What?” All of a sudden Chris is squinting and all around looking like he just concussed himself before he half-recovers, shaking his head. “No, what, no, I don’t want any eggs, I slept with this girl last night.”

One arm faltering a little, Zach lets the carton of eggs thump back down to the counter top, as his eyes drop down with a quick nod of the head, gaze lowered as he goes back to his own plate.

“Seriously, you don’t have to break up with the guy you only sleep with on the weekend,” Zach tries to laugh, but his smile is sharp and just a little too pained as he just barely looks over at Chris before forgoing his plate altogether, and reaching back to the cutting board, instead.

Chris is at his side in a hot second, leaning back against the cupboard fronts like he’s a fixture himself and readily available to decorate Zach’s kitchen.

“I want a promotion, then,” Chris tells him, voice sure as he tries to catch Zach’s gaze above the stove top, stooping his head so low that he can smell the green pepper.

Zach grimaces again and quickly raises his head, eyebrows both jerking in two different directions as he huffs out a stilted laugh, throws one hand up, and accidentally swings his knife through the air.

”I’m not even hiring,” He says, narrowing his gaze in confusion as he looks away from Chris briefly, and then very quickly back again. “And I really have no idea what you’re talking about, right now.”

”Me and you,” Chris continues, jostling the carton of soy milk with his elbow. “The whole time I was with her, you were the only thing I could think about, and – ”

Zach interjects, “That’s pretty gay,” out of mere self-preservation.

“You need to listen to me right now, because this is important,” Chris tells him, his voice taking on this warm, stilted tone as though he’s amused at the pained expression twisting its way across Zach’s face. “This might be one of those things you make fun of me for later.”

Despite his better judgment, Zach spares him an amused glance. “Totally listening.”

”I can’t be that guy for you anymore,” Chris replies, quietly, as he studies the line of Zach’s profile in the dim early morning light. “I’m not going to be able to fade in and out of your life now, because the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am stupidly, irrevocably in love-love with you, and this hiding in the shadows thing is not gonna work for me anymore.”

Both hands freezing exactly where they are on the counter top, Zach pauses for a second, his entire body lurching at such a revelation in the dimmed stillness of his kitchen. He can feel Chris staring at him from the side, eyes flicking back and forth over Zach’s expression, waiting.

“I want everything,” Chris says, softly, when Zach doesn’t respond right away. This seems to cut the cord and jerk Zach back to life as he exhales, flicking a glance toward Chris still staring back at him before he closes his eyes, head bowing. “Anything I can get isn’t good enough anymore.”

Zach shakes his head, removes his hands from the counter top, and nervously scratches the curve of one elbow with a ticking hand.

”You have no idea what you’re saying,” Zach assumes.

Chris shakes his head, and continues to watch him with a level gaze. “I mean every word.”

”You’re having a mid midlife crisis,” He continues, hand dropping to steel himself against the oven handle.

Amusement flickers across Chris’ face. “Not for another three years. You’re going to have to help me cope, by the way.”

”You’re really going to regret this tomorrow,” Zach finally says, turning at the hip to give Chris a half-assed glare that does absolutely nothing but make Chris’ nerve endings sizzle to a head.

Chris grins widely, funny-boning himself against the bottom edge of the cupboards as his arm jerks up involuntarily and he takes a step forward, hand sliding palm down against the counter top, and knocking bits of cut vegetables down onto the floor.

”Give me the day after that, too, and you have a deal,” Chris says quietly, voice faltering when Zach leans forward and presses their mouths together, one hand coming up to grip the side of his neck, bumping into two stray eggs on the counter on the way. They both roll off of the counter and straight down onto the floor, cracking and splattering egg yolk everywhere.

The only sound in the kitchen is the low, quiet nose of Chris’ laughter buzzing against the bridge of Zach’s nose as Zach steps into the mess and grimaces against Chris’ cheek, and then they’re kissing again, a real sealed deal.


	7. roadhouse blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Write me an AU where Chris is a bartender! Or a waiter or something, somewhere divey. Zach drinks and/or eats alone. Stuff happens?

There’s this seedy place on the corner of Hyperion that Zach has only ever heard bad things about. His brother’s girlfriend went there when she was fifteen to get rid of her virginity, three years ago a pretty significant drug circle was seized inside of it, and for the most part, Zach tends to steer clear.

Until he gets fired from his job, almost hit by a cab, and has his dog run away all in the same day, and he then shows up already drunk.

”You alright there?” The bartender asks him, smirking a little around the half-smoked cigarette hanging out of his mouth, one hand working the bar top over with a rag as the other steadies himself against the edge.

Zach picks his head up and tries to keep his eyes open. “Great.”

”Hey, glass of water?” He continues, pausing with the rag long enough to pull the cigarette from his mouth and exhale smoke from his nose. “It’s on the house.”

Grimacing a smile, Zach shifts around on the stool and almost falls right off the side.

”Let me guess,” He slurs, raising his eyebrows a lot higher than his eyes seem to want to open right now. “You like to help people.”

The guy laughs and holds both hands up, palms out, clearly amused.

”Hey, listen, I’m just a bartender,” He promises, eyeing Zach over again. “Do you want the water, or not?”

.

Zach staggers home that night drunk enough to prop himself up against a fence and throw up into the little garden below it. By the time he gets home, his head is throbbing, his vision is one big blur, and Noah is sitting at his front door, tail thumping against the stoop as soon as he spots Zach zig-zagging up the walkway.

“You better have brought my salary home with you,” Zach grumbles to him, too caught up in trying to get the door unlocked to give the dog a proper welcoming home.

All of a sudden the door bursts open and slams against the wall behind it, making a few things in the room jangle as Zach lurches forward after it, tripping over Noah as runs, already bolting directly for his food and water.

”Unemployed and talking to myself. My dog,” Zach says under his breath, as the remaining alcohol in his system sends him for another loop and his vision blurs, sending his legs veering off in another direction so he has to steady himself against the wall with one hand. 

.

By the time Noah comes prancing back, Zach has fallen asleep on the ground, back propped up against the plaster wall behind him, with the front door still open a good six inches in the dark of the night.

.

“Hello?”

Zach’s head droops a little lower and then bows to the side as his hearing swims in and out, waves of nausea already beginning to hang low on his shoulders, sending little pin-pricks of last night up the line of his throat.

The door jostles, and then there’s a knock before another, louder, “Hello?”

”What the fu – ” Zach actually jerks awake, then, clunking the back of his head against the wall as his leg spasms and sends his knee bucking up a few inches.

There’s a pause, before the door squeaks again, opening all of the way, and then a head pokes around the door frame. Zach tips his head back against the wall, raises his eyebrows, and tries to place the face staring back at him.

”Sorry,” Whoever it is says, looking a little amused. “Thought you might need this.”

One of his hands appear, too, holding Zach’s wallet.

”Ugh,” Zach shakes his head and hiccups, one movement closer to throwing up all over the place again. He closes his eyes against the sunlight now pouring in the front door, and curls up on himself, rolling over until his cheekbone is uncomfortably rested against the sticky wooden floor.

Whoever just closed the front door behind themselves better not have stolen anything.

.

The flashbacks start coming after he orders a pizza for himself that night.

”Fuck,” Zach swears, flipping through the wallet that was otherwise left untouched on the small table just inside his front door. Everything is still inside, including the remaining cash he’d pulled out to get wasted on. He hadn’t expected that one guy in WeHo to start buying him drinks as he had.

All of a sudden Zach has this tight moment of recollection that starts in the last bar he had staggered into. He hardly remembers anything except for the tacky neon signs the place had been decorated with, and the one Doors song that he remembered had been playing.

He starts digging around in his wallet again, and after a second’s looking, he finds a business card, one of those cheap designs you can print off on your own computer, and squints, trying to remember.

Luckys. Jesus, that was the really…

”Oh my god,” Zach intones, pinching the bridge of his nose. He must have been way more drunk than he’d thought to go into that place. Grimacing, he flips it over, and isn’t surprised when there are pencil marks on the back.

youre welcome, it says, with no capitalization or punctuation.

Zach studies his wallet one more time, and thinks back to early that morning, when he’d been too hungover to comprehend a stranger saying hello, and dropping his wallet off without taking anything from it first.

Just as Zach is reaching for his cellphone, the doorbell chimes, pizza boy waiting outside.

.

It isn’t like he has anything better to do without a job, so three nights later, after what Zach suspects might have been alcohol poisoning has passed, he grabs his wallet and his phone and makes sure Noah is locked in the guest room before leaving his house, feet set on the sidewalk with a particular destination in mind.

Luckys is a fifteen minute walk away, although it probably took him more like thirty or forty to get home the other night, not including the puke-breaks. Zach grimaces to nobody in particular as he crosses the street; that was a great addition to his overall character that night, he’s pretty sure.

Or, really pretty sure, at least.

.

As Zach walks into the bar, two big burly guys come out, both grey-haired and wearing loose leather, which is appropriate on nobody, Zach thinks, ducking past them and making a quick turn to get through the doorway. There’s no cover, no real bouncers, and not a whole lot of staff to keep an eye on what is coming in and going out of the door.

Zach hears the door close behind him over the sound of whatever this random German alt-rock is that they’re playing. Zach has a vague memory of wondering what the hell he was listening to the other night, as well.

He recognizes the bartender as soon as he gets close enough to make his features out through the stale smoke clouding up the air, and Zach feels the pinch of recognition in his stomach long before his brain concludes that he has the right person.

“I didn’t take anything,” Is the first thing the bartender tells Zach, as soon as he notices him approaching. “Your door was open, all I did was put your wallet down.”

Kind of grimace-smiling, Zach nods, and catches the line of frustration in the guy’s face for the first time.

”Yeah, about that,” He starts, voice oddly stilted as he leans against the bar top with one elbow and awkwardly catches eyes with the beefy guy sitting to his left, a little Lolita looking teenage girl beside him. Zach clears his throat. “I just wanted to thank you for dropping it off, you didn’t have to do that. I, uh…”

The bartender’s expression quickly fades from tense into moderately entertained, as both of his hands work over a bar glass in the sink, rinsing it out before he shakes the water off and sets it on a dirty looking rack.

“You were pretty drunk,” He supplies, as Zach finally laughs low and covers his face with one hand. “Lucky I saw you’d dropped it before one of the clientele did.”

Zach nods and scrubs one hand through his hair. “Sorry about the, uh… attitude I think I gave you, too.”

”What, you think you’re the first drunk guy to hassle me?” The guy laughs, reaching for another glass as Zach raises his eyebrows; he has a point. There’s a short moment of silence as the bartender rinses his glass out, and then pauses, licking his lips before he extends one wet hand over the bar top. “I’m Chris, by the way.”

Laughing nervously, Zach jerks his hand out of his lap, and accepts the handshake.

“Zach,” He replies, hand sticking to Chris’ palm from soap residue and old liquor.

Chris takes a step back and goes back to the glass, this wide grin splitting his face in two as he turns the tap off, shaking the half-cleaned glass off, sending water droplets flying in all different directions.

”Can I, uh, maybe get a beer?” Zach asks, leaning against the counter with one elbow as he tries to block out the odd couple sitting to his right. He raises his eyebrows earnestly, trying to clock the expression on Chris’ face. “I promise I won’t lose my wallet this time.”

There’s this moment of loaded silence between them, where Chris reaches into his flannel pocket for a bottle opener and grins, watching Zach over the bar top even as he stoops down and grabs a Corona, fingers hooked damp around the neck of the bottle.

”How about I wouldn’t mind it if you did?” Chris finally asks, raising one of his eyebrows as Zach accepts the beer, label already peeling back from condensation.


	8. shelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I would liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike... Chris/Zach first time, Chris decides to get a dog and is considering a purebred (since his dad/friend/manicurist got a really cute cocker spaniel from this breeder in Visalia or some damn thing), and Zach goes all ASPCA IS SRS BZNS on his ass and shows him the wonders of petfinder etc. Bonus if Zach then drags Chris to meet the foster parents and everyone thinks they're a couple and Zach is like, "Just give me some time, k?"

“No, my point is that if I get the dog, I don’t need a girlfriend,” Chris argues, burning himself as he pulls his frozen dinner out of the microwave. “Ow, fuck.”

He can practically hear Zach roll his eyes over the line.

”Wow, your reasoning isn’t perverse at all,” He sighs, as Chris fights with the frozen dinner, namely the fact that half of it is still frozen despite the non-frozen parts being totally burnt. “You can hardly manage your own life some days, man, how are you supposed to deal with another living thing?”

At that Chris frowns, and mashes his fork down against the half-cooked ‘pasta.’ It squishes through the prongs like it’s potatoes, or something else otherwise very non pasta-y.

“It’s a puppy, Zach, not your brother,” He defends, shaking his fork off before he starts mixing the burnt sauce and frozen noodles together. “I’m lonely, I don’t have the time for a relationship, and Maurice is really cute, okay?”

Zach pauses before asking, clearly confused, “Okay, we need to go over who Maurice is once more.”

”My dad’s new dog, Zach, jesus,” Chris sighs, enunciating DOG and JESUS as he throws his dinner back into the microwave. Zach snorts on the other end of the phone line. “I’m serious. When you come back, you’ll be replaced by something much cuter and… furrier than you are.”

There’s a loaded moment where Zach could say a whole slew of inappropriate things, before they both clear their throats, the microwave beeps, and instead, Zach sighs and then says, “Just do me a favor? Wait until I’m back in town and then, I don’t know, I’ll drive you to the adoption agency or something.”

”Don’t patronize me,” Chris bitches, but they both know he’ll wait regardless.

.

Three days later, Zach shows up at his doorstep with Noah hanging off of a leash.

”Morning dear,” He greets, when Chris cracks his door open and peeks around the corner. It is way too early for a Wednesday morning, but Zach has come prepared with a tray of coffee.

Noah immediately starts trying to wedge himself through the four inch gap in the door.

”Takes after his owner,” Chris grumbles, rubbing one hand over his face as he lets the door swing open all the way and takes a step to the side, letting the Quinto registry inside his unsuspecting home.

.

Chris wanders out of his bedroom fully dressed to find Zach at his kitchen counter, picking from a bowl of dry cereal with one hand as the other taps across Chris’ laptop keyboard, thumb touching down to scroll at intervals.

“I thought you didn’t get home until tomorrow,” He starts, bare feet sticking against his mopped as of yesterday tile floor as he heads toward the coffee Zach has bestowed upon the counter for him.

Zach glances over his shoulder, “Studio wanted me back for Friday.”

”Ahh,” Chris drops himself down into the stool on the opposite side of the counter where Zach has appropriated himself. Zach watches him with an amused expression on his face for a second, until Chris catches on and straightens his t-shirt. “What? What’s the look? What are you doing?”

Laughing a little under his breath, Zach goes back to the laptop screen.

”Nothing, just, look at this,” He twists the laptop around, until Chris has lurched forward enough he can squint and make out the text. “My friend adopted a boxer from them a few years ago, she’s a total sweetheart.”

Chris scrubs one hand over his face again. “I was just going to, I don’t know. My dad gave me the number of his breeder.”

”You’re joking.” Zach stares at him with this look that says he really had better not be joking.

Swallowing, Chris’ brain stumbles along for a second, until he glares back at Zach and defends himself, saying, “I was just considering my options, okay, universe police?”

”Sorry, just, look at this,” Zach says, voice affectionate as he clicks on the little tracker pad and a new page loads. “He’s a full-breed shar pei, his previous owners got rid of him when they found out he had heart disease.”

Chris licks his lips and looks at the photo, the little write-up underneath the dog’s profile.

”Great,” He says after a second, heart sinking low in his chest. “I’m going to adopt every dog in Southern California, now.”

This little flash of warmth flickers across Zach’s face as he glances over at Chris, sitting there with a frown on his face and both eyes bleary. 

“That’s not what I’m trying to say,” Zach tells him, clicking through to another profile, and then the next. “But if you’re going to get a dog, just, you know, look at this guy’s face, oh my god.”

Chris sits up a little straighter in his chair and leans forward, determined to find the source of sheer baby-talk in Zach’s voice.

”Get your face out of the way, let me see,” Chris grabs the laptop and pulls it a little closer towards himself, and is immediately confronted with a little photo selection of a dog listed as being a Labrador Retriever. He sits in silence for a second, letting the main profile photo creep over his psyche as a little pinprick of warmth shoots through his chest.

It is total, instant, and fully irreparable love.

“His name is Iggy,” Zach pitches himself against the counter top with one elbow and leans forward enough to see the screen again, like they’re two middle aged women in a hospital nursery oogling newborn babies. “Chris, oh my god.”

Chris opens his mouth to say something, but then he just ends up laughing instead, as he blindly reaches for the land line phone with one hand.

.

The next day, they’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway, arguing about how far up the exit to Pasadena is.

”I’m going to throw your seashells out the window if you don’t shut up,” Chris warns, effectively cutting Zach’s protests of ‘no it was past the Holiday Inn, I remember because I went there to pick up a new sofa last summer…’

Zach looks scandalized as he turns and replies, “They’re puka shells.”

.

Iggy is temporarily staying with an upper middle class family who apparently live at the end of a crescent in Pasadena that doesn’t seem to exist.

“There it is!” Chris shouts, just as Zach whips right by the street they should have turned down.

Reassessing his current stance in the day’s situation, Zach grips the steering wheel a little tighter, and snaps back at Chris, “I need at least thirty seconds’ warning.”

The great relationship they’ve always had has never, ever translated to car travel. Chris doesn’t suspect this will change soon.

.

Five minutes later, they’re both climbing up a heavily landscaped walkway, Chris bouncing up the stairs one by one as Zach takes them two at a time, pulling himself along with the metal railing.

“Her name is Jill,” Chris briefs Zach, as they reach the porch and start across it, dodging huge potted cacti and random bowls full of dirt. “She’s had Iggy for three weeks, she loves him, but I’m pretty sure I love him more.”

Zach is half-smiling at him as Chris reaches forward to push the doorbell. Inside, three long, heavy chimes sound all right after the other, and then a dog’s barking starts up, making Chris glance at Zach from the corner of his eyes and fix his posture. He might as well be going in for a job interview ten years ago for how nervous he feels.

“Hello there!” Jill smiles through the screen door, as she pulls the heavy oak one back and comes into view. “You must be Chris.”

.

“You’re really good with him,” Jill says ten minutes later, which has seen them all crowd into the living room, Chris down on both knees next to the coffee table as Iggy climbs up over his legs, clearly excited to see someone new.

Smiling, Zach pets the dog on the head even though most of his attention is already trained on Chris, and asks, “How is he with other dogs?”

”He’s a little hesitant, but it’s something we’ve been working on,” Jill answers, her own mouth pulling into a tiny smile as she looks between Zach and Chris, and then back over to Zach again. “You two already have a dog at home then, I assume?”

Zach’s eyebrows jerk up into his hairline accidentally, “Oh, well, I do. I mean, this will be his,” He gestures ineffectually in Chris’ direction. “We just, you know.”

”Oh, uh, yes, of course,” Jill replies, nodding sagely even though it’s pretty apparent to both of them that she actually has no idea what Zach is backtracking from. “Well, uh, either way, he’s such a good boy. He could make friends in no time.”

Smiling briefly at her quick recovery, Zach crouches down beside Chris and curves his hand over the roundest part of the dog’s head, which immediately distracts him and suddenly Zach is the center of his attention as he turns and digs his nose into Zach’s palm again.

”Seal of approval,” Zach laughs quietly, eyes darting to glance at Chris’ face over the curve of the dog’s furry head.

Chris grins back, and reaches over to scratch his fingers over the dog’s back, quickly stealing his attention back once more.

“Yeah,” He says, effectively ignoring Jill’s meandering presence behind the two of them, as she clears her throat and shifts from one foot to the other on the wooden floors. “Seems like it, huh.”

The grin that creeps across Zach’s face in that moment turns out to be irreparable damage to Chris’ insides, and, when he thinks back later, he’ll figure that maybe that day was the one where everything had changed.


	9. a suffragette city too fine!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fashion disputes in the Pine-Quinto household. For davyjonesing.

“No,” Zach shakes his head. “Veto. Seriously, veto.”

Chris makes a face, and pulls the shirt away from his chest. “What’s wrong with it?”

”It’s the deepest V I’ve ever seen, for starters,” Zach tells him, eyebrows raising up as he glances back down at the t-shirt Chris wiggled himself into just moments ago. “Not to mention it’s purple.”

Frowning, Chris replies, “You wear purple all the time.”

”That’s because I can pull it off,” Zach explains, throwing another couple plain t-shirts into his own suitcase. “Seriously babe I won’t be seen in the airport with you if you look like that.”

With a scowl Chris replies, scorned, “Well. I like it.”

.

“You’re kidding me with those shoes, right?” Chris laughs, clearly amused by the wide grin on his face as he stops in his tracks just outside the bedroom door.

Zach looks at him curiously, and finishes the knot in his tie.

“What? I got these in New York,” He answers, glancing back through the back porch doors, trying to judge how much longer Noah is going to sniff around the back yard for, especially since they have to leave in five minutes.

Licking his lips, Chris looks back down at the shoes and says, “I get that you love New York, but you don’t have to embrace everything about it, you know.”

”These are – ”

Chris interrupts to snicker and supply, “Gray.”

”So is your suit, which, by the way, I didn’t bring up, especially since your shoes are brown right now,” Zach grimaces, straightening his collar. “I get you don’t like the matchy-matchy, but brown, Chris? Really?”

Frowning, Chris picks one of his feet up from the floor, momentarily derailed from his argument against Zach’s choice of footwear.

”My dad always wore brown shoes,” He says after a second, beating Zach to the back door to let Noah back in when he appears in the glass pane. “And I know Zoe is going to hate those.”

Zach crosses his arms, smug, and responds, “She was with me when I bought them.”


	10. ada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid!fic. Chris and Zach have an adopted daughter, and she doesn't like to sleep. ashleyj28.

“Listen,” Chris bargains, standing in the doorway a little out of breath, with a stuffed dog in one hand and the top half of a pajama set in the other. “If you go to bed now, tomorrow, we’ll go out for ice cream.”

Yeah, they had agreed, we’ll have a kid, and it’ll be awesome, and it’ll be totally chill and easy and won’t we be the best little family ever?

Three years later, Chris would like to go back in time, and possibly punch himself in the face. Easy. Chill. They had clearly been deranged.

“Chris, what the hell?” Zach asks, coming out of nowhere with wet hair and what looks like a clean set of sheets in one hand. “Ada what are you doing?”

They both turn to stare down at the floor, where the little girl is sitting with her legs crossed, hair pulled out of the braids that it was tied in not twenty minutes ago, and her pajamas twisted awkwardly around her body.

“Daddy won’t paint my nails,” She frowns, looking particularly put-out as she reaches for a book laying nearest her leg.

Chris lets out a little huff of exhaustion and says, “It’s bedtime, Ada.”

”No,” Ada sighs, letting the book drop again before she falls back onto the floor, starfishing across the carpet as Zach begins to edge himself into the bedroom, pretty well looking exactly like you’d expect someone to when they aren’t sure whether they should get involved or just walk away.

Turning to face the doorway, Chris raises his eyebrows, and jerks his expression in a way that reads if you don’t help me now, so help me god…

“Ada, come on,” Zach starts, stepping into the room, and setting his sheet set down on the top roof of her wooden doll house. Gift from Gwynne… thanks, mom. “Up into bed, let’s go.”

Ada blinks up from them from the floor, bright eyes pink with sleepiness and yet stone cold set in that same little girl determination.

“I’ll pick you up,” Chris negotiates, wiggling the stuffed dog in his hand. “Me and Pony.”

Zach still thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world that Ada has a stuffed butch looking bulldog named Pony; Chris just thinks that that’s what happens when you let your drunk brother name your new daughter’s toys after her ‘welcome home’ shower.

“Pony says you’re a liar,” Ada explains, but even so, accepts the arms Chris wraps around her without so much as a fight.

Laughing a little (still funny), Zach tells her, “Pony isn’t wrong.”

“Daddy’s not a liar,” Chris lies, tucking her into bed carefully, like if he moves his hand the wrong way she’ll Exorcist right back outta bed and then they’ll all be at square one again. “Do you want to read a story?”

Ada accepts Pony when Chris hands him to her, and nods her head, already drowsy enough to snuggle down into the bedspread, bright and pink and ridiculous and exactly the excuse Zach has always needed to go shopping at Kitson.

“Night, bella,” Zach says quietly, tiptoeing across the room to kiss her on the forehead one last time before he flees and disappears into the safety of their bedroom.

Chris watches him leave over his shoulder with a little smile twisting his lips up, and the funniest part is, Zach gives him the exact same one back, even as he picks up his discarded sheets and slips out of the room, quiet.


	11. all is love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hallways are prime ass-pinching territory. For takki.

“Ow, okay, that one hurt,” Chris complains, continuing down the narrow corridor with one hand on his own ass, rubbing right where his thigh begins.

Zach laughs but continues on his own way, clearly amused with himself.

.

“You guys are so annoying,” John tells them both, a second after one of Zach’s hands caused Chris to jump a mile in the air and make a noise not dignified for a man of his age. “And gross, stop it.”

Laughing, Chris falls shoulder first into the wall to avoid Zach’s advances.

.

“Seriously,” Zach tries to bargain, one knee coming up into the air as he twists out of Chris’ immediate reach. “Seriously, okay, truce.”

Chris launches forward again, sights locked directly on Zach’s ass.

“Not happening,” He promises, getting a handful of cheek for his efforts.

.

“This hallway is pretty much where all hopes and dreams come to die,” Joe announces, leading his new lady of the week down it. She raises her eyebrows at him, and kind of boggles at the neutral carpeting. “You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Zach? Where are you, man?”

.

The dinner party is small and intimate, of course.

Zoe spends a lot of her time directing people around and through the Pine-Quinto residence, being that the two hosts ended up projecting most of their energy towards socializing, instead of the menial tasks such as bathroom direction.

“Three doors down on your left,” She smiles, pointing one of Zach’s producer friends’ wives down the main stretch of the house.

As she turns back, none other than the golden couple themselves are walking down the hallway, both looking way too pleased with themselves for their own good.

”Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” She sighs at them, only pausing to fix Chris’ tie as she passes the two of them by.

The second she’s out of earshot, Zach reaches down and pinches Chris’ ass once more for good measure, explaining, “Anniversary grope.”

Strangely enough, Chris lets this one slide.


	12. archie & veronica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach HATES TECHNOLOGY. Chris continues to play his zombie war game. For takki.

“Augh,” Zach groans, one of his legs flailing a little despite himself as he faces technology head on one more time, and, as usual, comes out the loser. “How do I get back to the first screen?”

Laying beside him on the mattress, Chris raises his eyebrows, and maneuvers his hands through the air as he takes out a particularly badass group of zombies on-screen.

“I don’t know,” He answers, most of his attention still on-screen when he misses one not-dead, and the momentary flair of panic bursts in his chest. “What screen are you talking about?”

Zach frowns at the touch screen of his phone, and swipes a few times with his finger.

“I don’t even know where I am,” He says, sadly, after fifteen seconds’ worth of silence only filled with the sounds of on-screen carnage.

Laughing, Chris bends his knees and brings both legs up, watching the remainder of his run through the V of his own thighs. His curls his toes into the pillow-top of the mattress, and adjusts his head against the wall.

“Just hit the home button,” Chris supplies, unhelpfully, jerking against the mattress during one particularly surprising attack.

Zach makes a noise and turns his attention from the iPhone screen to the 42” ‘bedroom TV’ that Chris talked him into buying three weeks ago. So far they’ve watched SNL on it once, Chris has played Left 4 Dead three times, and, during one particularly memorable hangover Saturday, they laid through an entire E! Rehab Celebrities special.

“You missed one,” Zach narrates, something he does way more than he’d ever admit to, as Chris runs past a zombie on-screen and into a wall instead. “Shouldn’t you get out of the corner? He’s attacking you.”

Shaking the controller ineffectually through the air, Chris makes a noise of annoyance and finally gets himself turned back around.

“I don’t need a zombie tourist guide,” Chris grits through his teeth, as he comes all too close to dying when he’s cornered by another zombie.

Zach rolls his eyes and then rolls over onto his side, curling up a little so he can rest the top of his head against Chris’ arm and still see the TV mounted on the wall by the foot of their bed.

“You’re baby shaking me,” Zach says after a second of getting bumped around by Chris’ ministrations.

There’s a second of silence before Chris reconvenes during a desertion in zombies he has to kill, where he actually lifts his arm up long enough for Zach to get comfortable and not jostled to death.

“Thanks,” Zach says, stretching his legs out over the remainder of the bed, eyes drifting closed as he relaxes to, funnily enough, the sound of zombies getting their heads brutally cut off on-screen.


	13. attached at the hip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tori Spelling throws a shelter fundraiser, which is how Chris and a puppy happens. For perdiccas.

Tori Spelling is this kind of mythological creature from Zach’s past that Chris still finds cautiously amusing, four years ago or not.

“She’s nice, Chris, like, legitimately nice, and not -- “ Zach cuts himself off, and switches lanes maybe out of something to do rather than absolute necessity. Chris gives him a curious glance from the passenger seat. Zach clears his throat. “…you know. You don’t have a great track record, either.”

Chris raises one eyebrow. He knows exactly what Zach is talking about but sometimes it’s kind of entertaining to listen to him talk around the topic.

.

The plan is to spend the afternoon at one of Tori’s LA Shelter charity events, of which Chris suspects will mostly consist of getting their names sharpied onto stickers and stuck to their chests, having their photos taken with an unfortunate looking mascot, and then unceremoniously being ushered into a firing line of photographers.

He doesn’t expect to spend it actually petting little fluffy animals and generally being a bigger girl than Tori and Zach combined over them.

“He has a pink nose,” Chris tells Zach, holding the little puppy up for Zach’s inspection. The little gray cat Zach has in one hand recoils at the sight of the dog, and Zach does a little dance trying to keep its claws out of his chest. “A pink nose.”

After a second Zach gets himself untangled from the cat, and sets it back down in its little run-around, twirling its fluffy tail around his finger before it runs off.

“Hi buddy,” Zach greets, when Chris jostles at him from the side again and shows off his newly found puppy, dark fur, light blue eyes, and, like Chris has mentioned close to a hundred times now, a pink nose. “Okay, you are really cute.”

Chris raises his hands and bumps the puppy’s nose against Zach’s chin.

“He fits into the palm of my hand,” Chris explains, bringing his arms back to hold the puppy against his chest.

Grinning, Zach bends over the next cage, and pulls out a slighter bigger, definitely fatter bullmastiff puppy, who is wrinkly and cute and very happy to see the both of them.

“They like each other,” Zach laughs, when his puppy almost lunges right out of his hands to get closer to Chris’, snifflier than most and happy to just nudge his wrinkle-face against Chris’ shoulder.

Chris grins and turns the puppy around so they can both see his face.

“Everybody likes Thundarr,” Chris grins, twisting around to look at the puppy’s face again.

There’s a pause before Zach laughs, “Thundarr? Like The Barbarian?”

Grinning up from behind the puppy’s head, Chris nods, and then adds, “Don’t worry, we can call yours Ookla.”

“Thanks,” Zach replies, laughing kind of, and clearly amused as he watches Chris’ expression, and tries really hard to not just lean in and give Chris a big smack of a kiss right there.

But, you know. Between he and Chris (and possibly Tori Spelling), he does reach for his free hand, twisting their fingers together as he decides to settle for just that, instead.


	14. best i ever had

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beach, late at night. Zach contemplates their relationship. For carry_on.

“The humor behind,” Zach trails off as he stumbles over a stick poking out of the sand, and then walks right out of his flip-flop. “The two of us having to go to the beach at night…”

Tipping his head back to watch the inky, star laden sky above them, Chris stops a few yards ahead, the six-pack of beer they picked up in one hand, a blanket in the other.

“…to avoid being seen by the paparazzi,” Zach has now caught up to him, even though he’s still pausing every few feet to shake the sand out of his toes. “Does not escape me.”

Chris smiles at him a little, shaking his head as they cross the sand, until they’re walking in the ocean soaked, packed ground right near the water’s edge.

“I’d just do anything for you, you know?” He asks after five minutes of walking in otherwise silence. He glances over at Zach through the murkiness of the four a.m. morning, and raises his eyebrows. “Nobody else could get me here.”

Looking back over at Chris, Zach can’t help the slow sneak of a smile that begins to crawl across his face, going from one ear to the other.

“What, I don’t have to get you stoned to talk about it, this time?” He asks, effectively breaking the moment as Chris laughs and shakes his head, gait against the sand slowing down as they come to a flat spot on the ground, free of garbage and not too easy to spot from the boardwalk.

Chris shakes the blanket out.

”Sun should be rising pretty soon,” Zach observes, turning to the blanket as Chris lays it down on the ground, setting the beer at the corner.

Settling down onto the ground, Chris waits for Zach to crouch down and sit beside him before turning, voice quiet as he asks, “You get that though, right? What I’m saying?”

”Yeah,” Zach replies, mouth curving into a half-smile before he leans in, one hand going to the back of Chris’ neck as they kiss, mouths soft and warm. He pulls back a little bit, and stares out over the ocean, quiet for a moment before he turns back to Chris and adds, unsure of how else to admit to it, “I’d give you whatever I could get.”

A sharp, quick grin jerks across Chris face as he laughs a little, quiet, and replies, “So we’ll be even, then.”

”Always,” Zach adds, leaning in again, and then leaning away just enough to pull Chris along with him.


	15. blue collar man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris sets his sights on painting every room in their new house. For rainbowstrlght.

“He only listens to Styx while he’s in there,” Zach sighs, switching his cellphone from one ear to the other. “If I have to hear ‘Don’t Let It End’ through the wall one more time, I’m going to have to move into a hotel.”

Joe laughs and then is immediately silent, which only means one thing: he’s either thinking, or, alternatively, about to impart bad relationship advice.

”Styx is classic,” He finally settles on, which is neither here nor there.

Rolling his eyes, Zach jostles the front door open – they still need to agree on some kind of finish for all of the new hardware, including hinges – and toes his shoes off in the foyer, kicking them over to where Chris’ running shoes and an empty plastic bag are twisted up against the wall.

“Good point,” Zach tells Joe, placating, mostly, as he shuffles down the empty hallway in his socks, trying to figure out what room could possibly be enduring Chris’ never-ending wrath today. “Listen, I gotta go argue about paint chips some more, don’t forget dinner tomorrow.”

Joe has already checked out of the conversation as he answers, voice distant, “Dinner tomorrow, gotcha.”

”Ten minutes is an appropriate amount of time to be late,” Zach continues, poking his head through the dining room doorway. No dice. “Three hours and forty five minutes is pushing it.”

There’s a shuffle on the other end of the line: Zach presses his palm against the front of the bathroom door, and it swings open. Empty.

”I got lost in Pasadena that time,” Is the fake excuse Joe gives him. “And, now I’m late for lunch because I’m standing here talking to you.”

Zach smirks, and turns around the corner, into the kitchen. Bingo. Chris is standing on a half-assed step stool they bought at Home Depot after breaking and dripping paint all over one too many a wooden chair.

“Listen, just don’t be late,” Zach reiterates, and then, before the counter-point can come, he barrels on. “Tomorrow, six o’clock, bring what you want, see you then.”

With that he hangs up, thumb sweeping across his iPhone screen in a not at all dramatic fashion. Sometimes he really misses the rotary dials.

”Your brother?” Chris greets, stepping up onto the counter with one foot, toes pressing into the tile grout they argued about for three weeks a month ago.

Zach leans against the counter’s edge with one hip, watching Chris as he paints the wall above the first cupboard, hand working over the brush before he swings down a little too low and swears softly, trying to thumb the paint off of the good wood.

Predictably, the Styx: Greatest Hits compilation is set on replay via the cheap, paint covered tape player sitting on the ground amongst the paint cans.

“You couldn’t tell by the semantics argument alone?” Zach grins, taking a step back as Chris lowers his paintbrush and then awkwardly begins to climb back off of the counter and onto his stool. “He’s dating some new girl.”

Chris drops the paintbrush down into the tray, and then jumps backwards off of the three-step stool, nodding with a little smirk to his face.

”What?” Zach asks, eyebrows raising. He knows that look.

The innocent look Chris shoots him immediately after raise his hackles even more.

”Nothing,” Chris laughs, wiping his hands off on a rag. “I didn’t say anything.”

Zach narrows his eyes. “I know that look. What’s with the look, tell me.”

”Nothing, I promise.” Setting the rag on the stool, Chris gestures to the wall color, and raises his eyebrows. “What do you think, huh?”

Still not totally convinced, Zach indulges himself with a little glance.

”They look good,” He says after a quick survey that consists of only sweeping his gaze over a good three feet of the expanse of wall. “I’ll get it out of Joe tomorrow, you know.”

Chris, still smirking, raises both of his hands in acquiescence without actually letting any pertinent information slip. They’re both silent for a minute, studying each other in a way that goes from being completely straight faced to expressions wavering at the edges in effort to not smile.

“Careful,” Chris warns belatedly, when Zach ends up cracking first and wrapping an arm around Chris’ shoulders in more appropriate greeting. “I’ll get paint all over your…”

Tightening his grip anyways, Zach half leans in and half manhandles Chris into his embrace until he can kiss the side of his face, which, like most other parts of Chris’ body, is streaked with gray paint.

“Don’t worry about it,” He replies, leaning in again, this time for a kiss proper.


	16. cast no shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time ever, Chris is fully in charge. It's harder than he expected it to be. For cheyenna_lee.

“Oh shit!” Chris swears to nobody in particular, when the vaguely okay sounding dripping noise turns out to be a little more serious after all, and he realizes that there’s a stream of dirty water leaking down the side of the kitchen counter, and into an unceremonious puddle on the tile floor. “Shit, shit, shit!”

He takes off across the kitchen, bouncing on his toes over Noah, who doesn’t even bother to raise his chin up from his paws, and snaps a dishtowel up off of the far counter.

Zach never warned him what a job watering the plants was. So far, he’s knocked one over, flooded one enough to lift the root right out of the soil, and now, apparently, has found the one plant pot with a hole in the bottom big enough to empty the last third of his watering can into.

“It’s okay, okay – shit,” He says, mainly to himself, as he slips through the puddle on his way back to mop it up.

.

“Of course I remembered the plant over the sink,” Chris argues, making a mental note to water the plant over the sink. Did they even have a plant over the sink?

Zach laughs a little, and replies, voice calm yet clearly entertained, “Are you freaking out? You sound like you’re really freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out, shut up,” Chris snaps, which only makes Zach laugh a little more. At least this time he has the decency to make it a little quieter. Chris pauses. “Why, does it sound like I’m freaking out?”

.

The Prius is one thing, and using energy efficient light bulbs is hardly a big enough deal to warrant a comment on, but this. All of this is clearly way beyond Chris’ wavelength.

“Alright, well,” And now he’s back to straight up talking to himself, as he twists another knob, and then punches in a few numbers on the digital screen for good measure. The washer and dryer both look suspiciously like large, energy conserving microwaves.

All of a sudden the machine is rumbling to life in front of him. And, a smart man through and through, Chris has only packed this test run with underwear, plain t-shirts, and some of his own, less favorable clothes.

The wrath of Zach returning from New York to a wardrobe shrunk by two sizes while also being the wrong shade of white altogether would be a force to be reckoned with.

.

“So, wait a minute. You’re saying that you drove to the mall, and then bought yourself new t-shirts and underwear on a whim? Without being under duress?” Zach clarifies, and Chris can pretty well see the inquisitive hitch of his eyebrows from here.

Chris clears his throat again, and, in the laundry room at home, stuffs the remainder of his shrunken, now purple-tinted t-shirts back into a black plastic bag.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” He double-confirms.

.

Zach walks in through the front door a week and a half later with his carry-on in one hand, cellphone and cigarettes in the other, and a pair of sunglasses pushed up into his hair.

“Wow,” He greets Chris, kicking the door closed with a swing behind him as he takes in the way that Chris is literally spread out over the living room couch, one ankle hanging off of the armrest. “I didn’t expect to see you alive.”

Licking his lips, Chris picks his head up, and says, “I forgot to pick you up.”

”That’s okay,” Zach smirks, dropping his stuff in the front hall before he crosses the living room, stooping over the back of the couch to bend down and give Chris a preliminary welcome home kiss. “You remembered to water the plant over the sink.”


	17. chaos theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach is pretty sure he can fix the broken fridge. Really pretty sure. Chris thinks so, too. Maybe. For withthepilot.

Chris returns from lunch with his mother to find every available surface in the kitchen covered with what he assumes used to be the residents of their refrigerator.

“What the fu…” He trails off, blindly setting his keys down on the kitchen table, atop a mass of undistinguishable frozen goods.

All of the counters are covered with produce, the oven is housing a veritable pyramid of apples and pears, and the sink is full of frozen, leaky-looking plastic bags that Chris doesn’t actually remember ever existing in the first place.

Despite the refrigerator doors being wide open, Zach is suspiciously absent.

“Zach?” He calls, unzipping his hoodie, and cautiously beginning the walk across the kitchen floor.

There’s a shuffling around in the bedroom, and then silence, and then the closet door squeaking open and closed, and then more silence, and then Zach comes out, still wearing the same pajamas Chris left him in this morning.

“Hey,” He greets, pausing to give Chris a quick kiss before he upends a crappy looking cardboard box on the one slab of free countertop.

Chris watches with vague amusement, gaze trailing between the fridge, which he assumes is the cause of all of this insanity, and the line of Zach’s hunched shoulders, as he picks out a few screwdrivers from his pile.

It’s pretty much a fact that Zach is the only guy Chris has ever known that kept a wide assortment of non-used tools in a shitty, broken legal-sized cardboard box in the back of his closet.

“So the fridge, huh?” Chris asks after a second, backtracking to begin rifling through one of the food piles on the counter. He picks up a tupperware of last night’s pasta and cracks it open.

Zach is quiet for another minute, shuffling as he rummages around, before he manages to answer, voice still distant and concentration obviously compromised, “It broke, so I took all the food out. I’m pretty sure I can fix it.”

“Alright, well,” Chris grabs a thing of yogurt, an apple, the carton of apple juice, a bottle of water, and a hunk of cheese. “I’m gonna start working on this.”

Waving him off, Zach returns to his tool pile, and Chris starts across for the kitchen table.

.

Three hours later, Zach has sworn 45 times, zapped himself once, almost broke his finger twice, broke the fridge three more times, and flew into unbridled rage once.

“Chris,” He snaps, jabbing the screwdriver into the back of the now unplugged refrigerator. “Come and hold this, I think I figured out how to fix it.”

Chris makes an uncomfortable noise, shifts on the kitchen chair, and pushes his plate of assorted meats and crackers away. It’s harder to empty a full fridge than it sounds, he should have enlisted Noah to help him much earlier than he did.

“Lemme at it,” He says, after managing to wrangle himself up off of the chair. “I bet I can fix it.”

.

Another two hours after that, Zach is running cold water over Chris’ hopefully not broken hand. They’re pretty sure you can’t break a hand by stabbing it accidentally with a screwdriver, anyways.

“Ow,” Chris hisses, when Zach thumbs a particularly sore spot.

Zach wrinkles his forehead. “That fridge is irreparable.”

“I know,” Chris agrees quickly, scowling across the room at the fridge, ominous and seemingly impossible where it sits with its dimmed interior lights and rapidly defrosting and leaking everywhere freezer.

Shaking his head, Zach turns the tap off, and reaches for a dishtowel.

“We can get an energy efficient one,” He nods after a second, patting the towel around Chris’ sore, stabbed hand. “They’re supposed to last much longer.”

Chris nods vehemently, and eyes the remaining produce looming over Zach’s shoulder.


	18. cover sometimes makes the book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris has hoarding tendencies, Zach learns to deal. For davyjonesing.

“So…” Zach trails off awkwardly and pauses in the doorway of Chris’ bedroom, raising one hand along with an eyebrow as he looks at Chris sprawled on the bed. “Would it be weird to ask why you have a plastic bag full of buttons in smaller plastic bags?”

From his position on the bed, paperback rested against the flat of his stomach, Chris raises one eyebrow in a way that says Zach should really get on the button-keeping train, and quick, as he replies, “In case I lose one from a sweater? Or one of my suit jackets.”

”Ah.” Pausing again, Zach lowers the bag, and nods his head. “Of course.”

.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Zach sighs, leaning back as another pile of junk falls out of one of Chris’ office cupboards. “I need some justification as to why you have a copy of the New York Times from four years ago.”

Chris makes a face, and clicks around on his laptop. “There’s an article I want to read in it.”

”I’m going to go crazy here,” Zach says, mostly to himself, as he tries to cram everything back into the cupboard.

.

“None of your tupperwares have lids,” Zach complains, interrupting Chris’ lounging on the living room couch with a waterfall of assorted plastic bits and pieces showering down upon him. “And the ones that do are all bent to shit.”

Shifting his legs, Chris picks up one plastic cup, and reasons, “You can just cover the tops with plastic wrap. And the lids sometimes still fit.”

”I pinched my finger trying to jam it together,” Zach continues, and then, as an afterthought or punctuation, even, sucks the tip of his finger into his mouth.

.

“You listen to CDs, still?” Zach asks, as he accidentally unearths at least a hundred or so CDs during a search for the fourth disc of the first season of Lost. “I thought you got AirPort?”

Chris digs his hand through the popcorn bowl, searching for the best pieces before Zach can get to them.

”I did,” He shrugs, licking butter off of his finger. “I just want to keep the hard copies in case I lose my files.”

Making an expression that says ‘ah, well, alright then,’ because it isn’t the weirdest thing that Zach has ever heard come out of Chris’ mouth regarding his odd hoarding tendencies, Zach turns back to the media cupboard, and resumes his digging.

.

When Zach unearths five different calendars from 1995-2000, he just doesn’t ask.

.

“The newspaper you found in my office,” Chris says one afternoon, when they’re sitting in his living room, and Zach is eyeing a precarious looking stack of old vinyl records in the corner. Chris doesn’t own a record player.

Zach glances over. “Sorry, what?”

”When you were looking for a calculator, and all of those newspapers fell out on top of you,” Chris is kind of smiling at the memory. “You asked me what the New York Times was for.”

Nodding, Zach tilts his head to the side a little, and says, “Okay, I remember that.”

”The newspaper was from the first day you kissed me,” Chris says quietly, one of his eyebrows raising in a way that tells Zach he has really been the stupid, unorganized one all along. “I kept it, and I’m not going to throw it away.”

Zach pauses, unsure of what to say, and then answers, chest flooding warm, “Okay. Yeah, okay.”


	19. cupid's chokehold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time, Zach spends some time alone. Spoiler: it sucks. For lore_kuhlen.

“Looks like it’s me and you again, buddy,” Zach says, and even though his words are in fact spoken in Noah’s general direction, the dog doesn’t pay much attention beyond chewing himself with a little more vigor.

Wrinkling his nose at the sound of Noah gnawing on himself, Zach leans back against the couch and eyes the ceiling.

He feels like now is a pretty good time of day to brood. It isn’t too bright outside, which means the sun won’t pull him out of any stupor he puts himself in. It’s a bit later, so really he should have no distraction other than whatever he does to himself.

Chris isn’t even supposed to call for another three or four hours.

Decided, Zach heaves himself up from the couch, and starts toward the bedroom, mind already toiling with dug-up memories.

.

Eight months technically isn’t that long.

It’s one television series season, barely a pregnancy, almost as long as the school year – really, in the grand aspect of things, eight months could go by in a flash. Zach is pretty sure at least. Really pretty sure.

The problem is that he still has five months until his eight are up, and none of them include any time spent with Chris in the same city as him. Whoever came up with the concept of ‘long distance relationship’ really didn’t have their head screwed on right, and really, how hard was it to get through eight months?

Zach quickly comes to decide that his major issue stems from the fact that everything around him, reminds him of Chris. And really, how are you supposed to be complacent with somebody not being around you when it’s pretty clear to the universe itself that is how the two of you are meant to be?

It’s unbelievable, really, the amount of shrapnel one relationship can bring to somebody’s life.

In one afternoon, Zach finds a stack of Chris’ magazines still on his office desk, walks down the hallway and vividly remembers stumbling drunk down it with Chris hanging off of his shoulder, fucking Chris over the chair in the hallway, fighting with him over the coffee table in the living room.

Three years is decidedly much longer than eight months, so how come the years feel so much shorter to Zach than the last few months have?

.

Chris trips coming up the stoop to Zach’s house and almost gives himself away by falling face first into the front door. It’s 1:30am, almost, he hopes that it isn’t in bad taste to surprise your decidedly significant other in the middle of the night when he assumes you’re on location in England -- he really doesn’t have the background to be much of an expert in the romantics of such a relationship.

Turning the key, he lets the door swing open quietly, so stealth, apparently, that he doesn’t even wake Noah.

With a grin, Chris sets his carry-on down in the front hall, and lets the door click shut behind himself. He only has twelve hours to do this, so he had better make them count.


	20. dictionary.com

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner party at the Pine-Quinto household, Zach screws with Chris' wine pouring via wordporn. For snoewhite.

Zach comes back from his smoke just as Chris is cracking the wine open, Zoe in her chair to his left, Karl antagonizing the dog to his right.

“Need more glasses babe?” He asks, already walking through the doorway into the kitchen to grab a couple more.

Smiling, Zoe accepts the first glass Chris hands her, and says, “Thanks baby.”

“Look at you and the pet names,” Cho snickers, sprawled across the dining room chair like it’s actually an armchair or a lounger.

Chris gives him a half-assed scowl. “Popularity isn’t all it looks like.”

“The prevalence Chris holds over his minions really is amazing,” Zach snorts, coming back through the doorway with two wine glasses in each hand.

The wine bottle jerks against where Chris has it rested against the edge of the glass, and it’s hardly noticeable but the little flare of amusement that flashes across Zach’s gaze is palpable.

“Minions,” Karl snorts, reaching to grab the half-full glass before Chris has even really pulled the bottle away from it. “His delusions really are starting to rub off on you.”

Zach grins, and jostles Chris to the side so he can sit in the chair he was leaning over.

“Hilarious,” He grins.

Sipping his wine, Karl settles back his chair and replies, mouth in a small grin, “I thought so.”

“Your sagacity wins me over every time, you know,” Zach grins, reaching for his own wine glass, and queuing it up behind Cho’s.

This time Chris jerks noticeably, cheeks flushing as he almost knocks the wine glass over and empties the bottle onto the floor.

Zach grins, biting his lip a little, and tries not to laugh.

“You alright there?” Karl smirks a little, eyeing the tight grip Chris has on the bottle, the red beginning to creep up his throat.

Exhaling through his nose, Chris resumes pouring his glass of wine, and replies, clearly trying to not strain himself, “Just fine.”


	21. don't tell me what it takes my dear to keep you in one spot, i'm crazy good at finding a way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast in bed. For duckgirlie.

“Hand me the,” Chris starts to say, but cuts himself off when Zach drops the remote in his lap, and then follows that up with the bowl of fruit. “Thank you.”

Zach shuffles his legs around in the bed covers, flips the sheet back over his lap, and twists around a little to get at his coffee sitting on the side table.

“You’re welcome,” He intones, taking a sip of his coffee. “Is this the new stuff you bought?”

One of the most recent battles in Chris’ life pertains to this very television remote, which is mostly beyond him -- he has no idea what Joe did, but somehow his computer hard drive is accessible through every screen in the house, something he still doesn’t know how he feels about.

Long story short: Chris hits the wrong remote button, and swears.

“For fucks sake,” He grumbles, almost dropping his breakfast as he backtracks on the remote. “Is this the what?”

Zach, already settling in, leans back against the headboard, and steals a slice of grapefruit out of Chris’ bowl.

“The coffee. New or old?” He repeats, making a face when the grapefruit is more sour than he expected. Chris manages to get the TV onto a local news channel, which is great, except for the part that it’s all in Spanish.

Still making faces, Chris fumbles through until they’re settled on a repeat of last night’s Daily Show, and peers over at Zach.

“Did you use the thing on the counter or the thing in the thing?” He asks, serious, leaning over to smell Zach’s coffee cup. “That’s the new stuff I got from Lamill.”

Zach situates himself a little more deeply in the covers, and rests his head against the side of Chris’ arm.

“It’s good,” He appraises, yawning.

Throwing the television remote down somewhere near their feet, Chris returns the yawn, nods, and rests his cheek against the top curve of Zach’s head.

“Yup,” He agrees.


	22. don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach gets sick. World War III erupts in California. For Anon.

For Zach, it starts with a calm sense of irritability.

”If I wanted to spend thirty dollars on pasta, I’d pay for dinner at Mr. Chow’s,” Zach tells him, in that stupefying zen master voice that makes the hairs on the back of Chris’ neck stand up. Chris pulls his arm, and by automation the three pound bag of penne, away from the edge of the grocery cart.

Feeling like he just got smacked on the back of the hand for snatching, Chris blurts, voice showing all of the general signs of confusion, “Sorry.”

”Just get the penne and broccoli,” Zach sighs, tiredly, leaning on the handle of the grocery cart with both elbows, his back hunched and his shoulders bowed. “And would it kill you to buy a new pair of shoes that aren’t slippers.”

He pushes past Chris, feet sliding against the floor in a distinctly old man style shuffle, as Chris stands in the middle of the aisle, bewildered, with what seems to be the wrong brand of noodle in his hand.

*

He’s manning the oven later that night, watching the huge pot of water come to a boil when Zach sneezes behind him, dropping the bag of lettuce he’d just procured from the fridge onto the floor.

”Goddamnit,” Zach swears to nobody in particular, sniffling, as Noah trots in from the living room to investigate.

Chris doesn’t say anything, but watches over his shoulder carefully before turning back, and turning the element down to medium.

Looking back, that’s probably when he should have looked into building a nuclear shelter for him and the pets to hide in until the electric shitstorm that was Zachary Quinto being sick rolled over.

*

Chris gets into bed while Zach is still in the shower that night, with the television remote in one hand, and his pre-sleeping glass of water in the other. He pulls up the digital program guide and starts flipping through via the jump button, a habit that Zach hates with the fire of a million suns.

Backtracking when he flips right past the channel he wants to watch -- HBO, he’s a sucker for the Sin City series, and that little British guy who hosts it -- he sips at his water and then sets it on the night table, knocking his cell phone off the other side in the process.

Settling back against the pillows, Chris grins as the episode intro comes on.

”The things some people do with their horses is disgusting,” Chris says, as Zach comes out of the bathroom scrubbing his hair with one towel and trying to keep the other around his waist from falling right off.

For being such a metro homosexual, Zach is still missing some of the little things, like figuring out how to effectively tie a towel and then keep it from falling off.

“Oh my god,” He intones, forgetting about his hair for a minute to stand there knock kneed, stunned into silence as the host interacts with a couple onscreen who, for lack of better description, enjoy breeding their horses with… things that aren’t necessarily other horses.

Chris squeals and holds both hands up in front of his face. If he didn’t want to see this so badly, he doesn’t think he’d be able to stomach it.

“That’s,” Zach starts, but then cuts himself off with another angry sneeze, one that knocks the towel right off of the top of his head, and makes the other come undone, only hanging by where Zach has it by one corner on his hip.

Before he has a chance to say ‘bless you’ or ‘are you okay’ or, well, anything really, Zach is throwing his towel against the ground, spinning around on one heel, and marching back towards the bathroom, making a noise that is halfway been ARGH and EUGH.

By the time Zach comes back, Chris has turned off the TV, the lights, and has tucked himself underneath the covers. Pretending to be asleep is a much better decision than having Zach know he’s witness to the gongshow of him stubbing his toe at the foot of the bed, swearing loudly, and then punching his side of the bed sheets back.

Chris falls asleep for real listening to Zach fight with the bed clothes and sniffle, angrily ripping Kleenex from the box beside his pillow with a rhythm that quickly lulls Chris into legitimate sleep.


	23. first day of my life, i swear i was born right in the doorway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid!fic. Chris and Zach have a son, Nolan, and these are his first steps. For iheartdraco11.

“Aagh, Chris don’t touch him!” Zach exclaims, jerking forward to push Chris’ hands away if need be.

The loud noise actually startles Nolan more than Chris’ one hand would have, and the baby falls backwards onto the carpet with an unceremonious thunk. The wide-eyed stare he levels up at Zach does not go unnoticed.

“Cause that worked so much better,” Chris laughs, picking the baby up by his sides, and adjusting the back of his t-shirt a little before properly steadying him on his feet. Nolan’s arms wobble out, and he eyes Zach warily as Chris moves his hands back away.

Zach grins and wiggles his fingers in the air.

“Shut up,” He says through his teeth. “He’s going to do it.”

Nolan laughs at the dumb expression on Zach’s face and flings his arms up into the air, effectively knocking himself back down again. This time he flips himself back over onto his hands and knees and backs himself up like a little car, crawling across the two feet that separate Zach and Chris’ bent knees to climb up into Zach’s lap.

“Nolan, hey,” Chris calls, holding his arms out. “Hands, come on.”

Still amusing himself, Nolan giggles quietly and rights himself in Zach’s lap, until Zach pulls him out and sets him back on the floor, wrapping his fingers around each of the baby’s hands.

“Come on buddy, walk.” Now Chris is doing the finger wiggling as Zach steadies Nolan and then lets him go, hands hovering a few inches from either side of the baby’s torso incase he decides to take a header to the ground. “Nolan, come on, come on.”

Zach grins and then laughs despite himself when Nolan pitches forwards again, this time landing close enough to Chris’ knee to pull himself up and give it a gummy bite.

“Baby slobber,” Zach narrates, holding his hands out again. “Come back, Nolan. Come on.”

Wiping off his knee, Chris sets Nolan’s feet back on the floor and turns the baby around, letting go once he’s got as much balance as possible.

There’s one trepidatious step, and then another, before he stops moving altogether and then loses balance, arms jerking in mid-air before he wobbles forward and barely catches himself against the carpet with both hands.

“Aww you almost had it!” Chris exclaims, picking the baby up and smacking a kiss to the side of his head before he straightens his own legs out and sets Nolan on his feet between them. “Look, see daddy? Zach, wave.”

Zach rolls his eyes. “Chris, he knows who daddy is.”

“Say wave, daddy,” Chris says against the side of Nolan’s head, grinning across the carpet at Zach.

Making a loud noise of agreement, Nolan bounces on his feet and flings one arm up into the air, which has come to be the Official Pine-Quinto Code for ‘yes, this is something I very much agree with and am into!’

“Hi,” Zach waves with half-assed effort, before holding his hand out again. “Come on!”

Both of his arms out for balance, Nolan thunks one foot down on the ground, and then the other, and then he’s tottering, full on walking away from Chris and rapidly coming to approach the center marker between them.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Zach intones, his face completely shocked as he holds both of his hands out and stares at the baby staggering towards him.

Chris, unsurprisingly, pulls out the same reaction he has to all of Nolan’s accomplishments so far – smiling, crawling, making baby noises – he starts laughing, like, full on happy beyond any doubt laughing as he watches Nolan crash into Zach’s hands and start giggling himself.

The grin Zach levels across the carpet at Chris is absolutely incredible, to say the least.


	24. heads are gonna roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harold is dead set on cock-blocking Chris for all eternity. For davyjonesing.

Grinning against Zach’s mouth despite himself, Chris rolls backwards onto the mattress and wraps one arm around Zach’s bare shoulders, tugging him down until they’re close enough to kiss.

Zach has one hand wrapped around the back of Chris’ thigh when he stops kissing him, pulling back an inch to sniff at the air and then ask, panting a little bit, “Do you smell that?”

”Smell what?” Chris replies, voice rough as he lets his head drop back against the pillow, round of the heel of his foot digging into Zach’s lower back. He gives Zach a curious look as he sniffs in a couple times, and then grimaces, “What the hell?”

Sagging down against Chris a little bit, Zach makes a noise of frustration and then pulls back.

”My vet cancelled on me,” He starts to explain, letting go of Chris’ leg and otherwise untangling the remainder of their body parts. “Which is exactly when Harold decided to start spraying everything.”

Chris, still confused, pushes himself up onto both elbows, and watches as Zach crawls off of the bed, still naked, and starts across the room, sniffing the air as he wanders, obviously trying to track the disgusting scent down.

“I thought he was fixed already,” Chris supplies, unhelpfully, from the bed.

Frowning, Zach picks up the pair of pants he’d dropped on the floor en route to the bed just twenty minutes ago, and covers his nose with his free hand.

“So did I,” He replies, coughing as he walks out into the kitchen, sprayed pants hanging by the hook of one finger.


	25. he could be the one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach gives Chris a haircut in their kitchen. For takki.

“I don’t qualify as a lumberjack,” Chris argues, adjusting himself on the kitchen chair otherwise unceremoniously sat in the center of Zach’s kitchen. He’s sitting on it, with a ripped open garbage bag around his shoulders, and a pile of newspapers around him on the floor.

Or, as Zach had earlier announced unhelpfully, ‘like a dog.’

“Babe until I can go a week without seeing you in flannel thundering around town with a scowl on your face, I’ll call it like I see it,” Zach replies, brushing a hand over the back of Chris’ neck.

The low hum of the hair clippers suddenly fills the room.

”Shouldn’t you be reading the Sartorialist or something?” The tone of Chris’ voice is low, and, dare Zach mention it, pissy. “And try not to take my ear off this time.”

Grinning despite himself, Zach moves in and presses the clippers against the crown of Chris’ head, brushing his other hand down over Chris’ plastic-covered shoulder as the hair catches the blade and the kitchen quiets down to only the low sound of constant buzzing.


	26. hold your body on your legs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris has a Zach-doing-yoga watching regime. It's serious. For backland.

For Zach, most mornings start off the same.

Wake up, a given. Actually get up, not as easy as it sounds. Kitchen, feed the dog and the cat and sometimes himself, at least put the coffee on for Chris. After the kitchen comes the bathroom and the shower, a pair of yoga pants following and not much else on his damp journey back into the kitchen.

By the time he’s picking up Noah’s food bowl and trying to track down his schedule for the day, Chris has inevitably already settled himself in the living room, cross-legged in the furthest corner of the couch.

“You’re starting to get predictable,” Zach tells him, as he walks through the living room doorway scratching his ear. In the beginning Chris had at least had the decency to be a creep about it, and not be obvious in his oogling.

Zach isn’t sure what he prefers more. At least this Chris doesn’t breathe so loud.

“Check it out,” Chris gestures, grinning a little to himself as he pulls the t-shirt he’s wearing away from his chest. It pretty clearly reads YOGA: SPECTATOR/MAT INSPECTOR.

Making a face, Zach reaches for his mat, safely rolled and leaned up against one of the bookshelves as always, and says, “That’s kind of creepy. What does it say underneath?”

“Kristen got it for me.” Now Chris is actually laughing, dopey and probably still asleep as he sits there. “She wrote ‘#1 ZQ Fanboy’ underneath in Sharpie.”

Zach smirks a little despite himself, and unrolls the mat with a quick flick of both hands, bending over as it settles down against the floor.

“That makes Kristen about as weird as you are.” He pauses, kneeling down to straighten out the curled up edges of the mat. “Wait a minute, how exactly does she know that you partake in this creepy sport for pleasure?”

Folding his arms across his chest, Chris settles a little deeper into the couch, really getting comfortable, and answers, “Remember when we got drunk at the Pink Bicycle last month?”

“…Yeah,” Zach replies.

Chris shrugs, and then cuts himself off with a yawn as he adds, “Yeah, well, that was my answer.”

“Not gonna ask,” Zach sighs after a moment, finally settling himself in the center of his mat.

Secretly he finds it a little easier to zen out with Chris sitting right there, anyways.


	27. HOVÅS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach and Chris go to IKEA! For littlelightss.

Zach is a big advocate of the “Someone Is Going To Steal Our Cart” program, which is why Chris ends up sitting in an IKEA-set living room with the industrial sized shopping cart parked between the television stand and the $49.99 coffee table.

“I don’t know,” He appraises, making a face as he shifts back and forth on the medium foam, upper lower end leather couch. His knees feel like they’re up to his ears. “This one is kind of hard.”

Walking away from where he was studying the information card on a set of poppy red curtains, Zach studies the couch from afar, like he can judge all of its intricacies just by the way Chris’ ass is sagging into the middle cushion.

“Move over,” He says after another second of silence, stepping clear over the coffee table to settle himself down beside Chris.

They both pause for a moment, sitting shoulder to shoulder -- interview stance, as Chris likes to call it -- and staring at the side of the cart.

“I feel like I’m in a doctor’s office,” Zach snickers after another minute, turning a little to look at the back support.

Chris makes a face in agreement, and squeaks against the leather as he rifles himself into a fully upright, standing position.

“I like the coffee table, though,” Chris adds off-handedly, stopping to toe at the coffee table’s leg before he resumes his helm at the shopping cart, already loaded down with a catalogue and its tiny, ineffectual pencil.

As he starts to back out of the little staged apartment, Zach gets up from the couch and nods, climbing back over the table.

“It’s nice,” He agrees, stopping mid straddle to lean down and flip the decorative silver bowl set on top of it over. “Remind me to get one of these.”

Chris snorts and resumes pushing the cart at a leisurely pace, shuffling right past the next apartment set-up, which is primarily decorated in red and pink.


	28. joker and the thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It really shouldn't be so hard to coerce your boyfriend into becoming your poolboy. For takki.

“I’m pretty sure I have heatstroke,” Zach announces, and he does look particularly red-faced as he starts back across the lawn, both arms weighed down with tree clippings and assorted bits of plantation. “I ripped my knee open on the path, and I don’t think I’m going to get the dirt out of my pores anytime soon.”

Studying the bulge of Zach’s muscles and the fact that he took his shirt off nine round-trips ago, Chris raises his eyebrows, and replies, “But listen to why we should, first.”

”Not gonna happen.” Zach flings his arms out, and all of the branches go tumbling down onto the tarp laid out on one corner of the yard, where Chris supposes he’s going to come and get some organic hauling company to take it away. “At least not until I get the splinters out of my hands.”

Chris leans against one of the porch columns, and raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t think that you’ve thought this all the way through,” He re-starts, even though it might as well be a lost battle. It’s pretty clear at this point that Zach doesn’t do dirt or grime, regardless of whether or not fucking in it is included. “How about a compromise?”

Coming to a stop in the middle of the yard, Zach wipes the back of one forearm over his sweaty forehead, and replies, mostly out of breath, “How about I finish what I’m doing, you make me some dinner, I get a shower, and then we fuck on a bed like normal people?”

”I’ll do the mouth thing you like,” Chris bargains, now beginning down the slippery slope of bartering.

Zach rolls his eyes, and starts to the back of the yard, where he just has to turn up the sod of one more flower bed before he can call his day a sweet success and retire to the soft pillow-top of his mattress.

“You always do the mouth thing I like,” Zach calls over his shoulder.

Frowning, Chris hesitates before sliding back into agreement. Alright, he will concur, Zach has totally got him there.


	29. i only have ears for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning bathroom routine, with a heavy dose of banter. For ninety6tears.

“You know, you were a lot funnier when we first met,” Chris calls out from the shower, before there’s a squeak of foot on tile and the gentle bump of elbow against shower glass.

Despite his best efforts, Zach grins at his own reflection in the mirror, and tries not to cut himself as he runs the razorblade down the curve of his jaw.

“No I wasn’t,” Zach debates, leaning forward to rinse the blades out. “I just save it all up for other people, now. I’ve wooed you already, I’m not going to use my good material on you.”

Chris spits either soap or water out of his mouth; either way it’s a gross sound.

“I’m going to stop wearing nice shoes, then,” He retorts from inside his shower-ly tomb, sounding way too proud of himself for somebody who just played tit-for-tat with a pair of loafers. “And maybe gain ten pounds.”

Rolling his eyes, Zach brings the razor back to his face. “You’ve always had particularly bad shoes, and I’m pretty sure if you gained any weight it would just go straight to your ass.”

“I’ll lose weight then,” Chris continues, shutting off the water. The affinity Zach has for his ass really is astounding. “Are you shaving your eyebrows?”

Zach snorts without meaning to, and rinses the razor.

“Are you working on growing some chest hair?” He asks innocently, setting the razor down at the edge of the sink. He reaches for his towel and accidentally drops it into the half-full sink, straight-up karma.

The shower doors slide open and then one of Chris’ legs are poking out, toes hesitantly stepping down onto Zach’s bath mat.

“I figured you have enough for the both of us,” He smirks, watching Zach’s face through the mirror as he wraps a towel around himself and steps off of the mat, still dripping wet and partially covered with shampoo suds.

Zach drains the sink and dries off his face with the dry half of the towel as Chris squeaks across the bathroom floor, trying to get the water out of one ear despite the fact that he’s dripping with it everywhere else.

“Morning,” He says quietly, wrapping his arms around Zach from behind with a wide grin on his face. Zach laughs and then looks at him in the mirror again, before reaching up and patting the top of Chris’ head over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

Laughing still, Zach replies, “You’re welcome.”

“Your five o’clock shadow is back already,” Chris intones, pressing his mouth against the curve of Zach’s shoulder as he turns his head to eye his jawline. “And I’m pretty sure it isn’t past eleven yet.”

Zach smiles and shakes his head, “Well, you’re covered with soap and soaking wet, so I’m pretty sure we’re even.”

”Guess so,” Chris grins, smacking a kiss onto Zach’s freshly shaved cheek.


	30. "In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris adopts a bulldog. Named Chunk. It is true love. therumjournals.

Three days after Zach’s birthday, Chris comes home with this beefy-looking Valley Bulldog that immediately takes a liking to picking up Zach’s shoes and carrying them around like tennis balls.

“Are you crazy?” Is the first thing that Zach asks regarding the situation, watching as Chris watches the dog lumbering around with this dumb smile on his face, like he’s watching a relative succeed or, worse yet, a small child learning a new skill.

Chris shakes himself out of dog-gazing, and glances over at Zach.

“His name is Chunk,” He explains, then pauses. “Or Truffle. I haven’t really decided yet.”

Mouth dropping open, Zach almost loses his phone down the couch cushions again as he takes that little tidbit of information in. He imagines showing up at the dog park down the road, oh yeah, this is Noah, he’s a gentleman, and that, that’s… you know, Chunk.

“Cute, huh,” Chris fills in the silence after a second, bending down to clap his hands, and then clap them again, and then shoo Noah away when he comes over instead, and then clap one more time, and finally settle for walking over and dragging Chunk across the hardwood by his back haunches.

Zach watches the scene unfold with a vague sense of horror, and tries not to think about the amount of slobber produced from a beast with a bad case of underbite.

.

The next morning, Zach freezes inside the bedroom doorway when he hears Chris’ voice in the kitchen outside, possibly talking to himself.

“Come on, eat it, not that fast, you’ll choke,” He’s saying, voice soft and amused, just barely louder than the slobbery noises coming from beneath it.

Face pained and about a mile past grossed out, Zach peers around the doorframe, and feels his face jerk in further horror at the scene he takes in.

Chris is sitting on the kitchen floor with Chunk, his newspaper spread out to one side, coffee sat on top of that, his bowl of cereal on one knee with Chunk’s morning kibble in a bowl by the other.

The dog’s nub tail is wiggling around so fast Zach isn’t even sure if it’s visible anymore.

“Morning,” He chances, taking a step into the room.

Glancing up at him, Chris grins, and reaches for his coffee.

”We’re having breakfast,” He explains.

Zach nods, and edges towards the coffee pot. “Uh huh.”

.

The awkward understanding Zach has toward the friendship Chris forms with Chunk very quickly morphs into unreserved delight, mostly centered around making fun of the way that Chris treats Chunk like a little human.

“Oh my god, Chris,” Zach laughs, covering half of his face with one hand when he walks into the living room to find Chris struggling with Chunk and a dog sweater. “That thing is way, way too small for him.”

Chris grunts as he tries to wiggle the knit sweater down over Chunk’s shoulders.

“It’s just loose skin,” He explains, which sends Zach into another peal of laughter.

Zach grins, leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, and watches, entertained.


	31. keeping quite the collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After one hundred years together, the sex starts to get boring. For the_deep_magic.

“What the fuck, Zach,” Chris bitches, after a few minutes of stumbling around in the dead-dark of their bedroom have passed, and he’s ambling dangerously close to Over It Chris territory.

Zach sounds like he’s somewhere on the bed as he replies, “You’re breaking character.”

”I can’t see where I’m going,” Chris snaps, before there’s a thunk, some follow-up swearing, and then the light flips on.

In the middle of the bed, Zach sits with his legs bent out, blinking owlishly into the sudden brightness of the room.

“Pretty sure a New York cop wouldn’t cry about a stubbed toe,” He says after a second, unhelpful as ever as he wiggles against the awkward angle of his arms, twisted up behind his back, and cuffed to the top bar of their headboard.

Chris makes a noise that sounds halfway between a oooooo and aaaargggh, and slaps the light back off as he limps out of the room.

.

“I’m sorry,” Zach laughs, trying to tilt his face away from Chris’ line of vision, rolling his head back into the pillowcase. “I’m sorry, keep going.”

The quiet buzzing makes a funny noise when it hits the fatty part of his thigh and then Zach is in stitches again, his stomach jerking as he laughs, bringing one hand up to cover his face as Chris grins despite himself, and leans down to rest against Zach’s kneecap.

“I just,” Zach continues after a second, trying to gather himself as he props up onto his elbows, and eyes Chris laying between his sprawled legs. Chris has the decency to turn the vibrator off, at least. “I feel like I’m on Sex and the City, or something.”

Chris laughs for real then, groaning as he throws the sex toy off the edge of the bed.

.

They end up in the Emergency room at 5am when Zach gets the great idea to take two Viagra and fuck Chris for hours.

And he does, with the fucking and the hours and the wicked erection, but then all of a sudden morning is breaking outside and it’s still not going down, and Zach’s heart starts to palpitate in the not-good way.

“Think of the Federation,” Chris says, helpfully, holding Zach’s hand tight when the doctor comes in with the scariest looking syringe this side of Saw II.

.

“Just put your foot, yeah, well, no I don’t, okay, yeah,” Zach is instructing, or narrating more like, as Chris attempts to defy physics. “Now your -- there you go.”

There’s a pause, before Chris exhales loudly, and squeaks, “I’m stuck.”

”No you’re not,” Zach argues, trying to push himself up onto his elbows. “Are you?”

Chris makes another funny noise, and then swears, snapping, “I really, really am.”

.

“Ah,” Chris groans, head rolling forward as his hand jerks out and slaps against the top of the headboard for balance.

Underneath him Zach starts to pant, skin hot, hips working up as Chris rolls down, Chris’ fingers curling around the edge of the frame as Zach’s run up the tops of Chris’ thighs, hooking around to his hips.

“Say -- say hi,” He breathes, as Chris bends at the waist to give him a sloppy kiss as he drops his body back down again. “To the camera.”

Across the room, almost inconspicuous, a little red light blinks on-and-off in the dark.


	32. kids don't stand a chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chores are something to bargain with sex over, naturally. For davyjonesing.

“Alright, if you take the garbage out, I’ll clean the bathroom,” Zach bargains, mostly because he knows there’s a black widow that frequents the garbage area, and Chris doesn’t. Yet, anyway.

Chris wrinkles his brow. “If you take the garbage out and clean the bathroom, I’ll mow the lawn and handle the gutters.”

”Handle the gutters?” Zach asks, making a face. “What are you, butch now?”

Rolling his eyes, Chris taps the list of designated chores Zach OCD-ed all over this morning.

“You need to get over your irrational fear of spiders,” Chris replies, and damn, Zach really hadn’t thought he’d figured that out yet. “And you hate going up ladders.”

Zach pauses. This is very true.

”I’ll do the bathroom and the lawn, you do the garbage and the gutters,” He finally bargains, trying to fill the tone of his voice with appreciation. “Or you can deal with backyard mice.”

Eyebrows jerking up into his hairline, Chris quickly agrees, saying, “Deal.”


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid!fic. Zach and Chris have a son, Nolan, who watches Chris try to shovel the snowy sidewalk. For bathsweaver.

“No, Chris, let’s not hire someone to do that for us, Chris, we can do that ourselves, Chris,” Chris grumbles, jamming the shovel back into the snow caked over their front steps, a good seven or eight inches high.

He’s wearing boots, two pairs of socks, sweatpants, jeans, waterproof pants, a t-shirt, a hoodie, another hoodie, his jacket, a scarf, a hat and mittens, and he’s still cold. He’s from southern California, he shouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

“Do you want something to drink?” Zach calls from the top stoop, a cast over the lower half of his left leg, stunt gone wrong, and the baby on his right hip.

Out of breath, Chris jams the shovel into the snow, leaves it there, and rips the hat off of his head. He’s pretty sure he’s got snowburn on his cheeks.

“I hate New York,” Chris snaps up the stairs of the brownstone. “Where’s his hat, Zach, jesus.”

Zach knots his eyebrows, and turns to eye the baby as though he’s just only realized they’re attached at the hip.

It’s pretty clear Nolan is wearing a warm enough sweater, and being that they’re still enveloped in the heat looming out from inside, Zach doesn’t assume the kid is going to come down with hypothermia anytime soon.

Then again, according to Chris, he’s from Pittsburgh. What does he know?

“Snow,” Nolan points out, helpfully, extending the hand not wrapped around the back of Zach’s neck to reach out and touch the few snowflakes still falling from the trees.

Zach grabs his hand and presses it back down against his body, lest they invoke Chris’ wrath toward the other-other season again.

“I’m trying to make lunch,” He settles for announcing, as Chris goes back to accosting the snow drifts with his plastic shovel. “Try not to die in the next fifteen minutes.”

With the sounds of Chris’ gentle bitching coasting up into the hallway, Zach clicks the front door closed, and gives Nolan the usual ‘crazy daddy’ expression.

Nolan seems to know exactly what’s going down and laughs like a maniac, lightly smacking Zach in the cheek for his efforts.


	34. material girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris grows a beard to prove a point. The beard is not Olivia Munn. For paitac.

“What, what?” Chris asks, pulling a couple of plates down from the cupboard while simultaneously avoiding accidentally crushing Harold’s tail with his foot.

Zach makes a face at him, and stirs the pasta sauce a little more.

“Nothing, just…” He squints his eyes tighter, studying Chris’ face with an intensity neither of them have seen since he decided to clean the garage out eight months ago. “Did you dye your hair?”

.

Chris has not, in fact, dyed his hair. Nor has he cut it, or bleached his eyebrows, or succumbed to a facial peel – really, any of the ridiculous things Zach has suggested him partaking in for the last week have a status set to ‘no.’

Or, well, maybe a ‘not yet’, anyway.

The truth is, Chris is in the middle of a stand-off. A real Texan throw-down that stems down to the fact that Zach can’t figure out when a razor blade is fresh, dull, or about to slice your face open in three different places.

Chris figures that growing himself a beard will fix this little ineptitude, and also, get his point across very nicely.

.

“Did you…” Zach trails off, and then stops altogether, because he can’t parallel park when he’s breathing much less when he’s putting words together in a slightly cohesive manner.

Once he’s got the car situated, he pops his seat belt and finishes, “Did you change your contacts? Are your eyes bluer?”

”Bluer?” Chris asks, squinting. “Really?”

Zach yanks his keys out of the ignition, and gives Chris a wounded look across the interior of the car.

“It’s a word,” He says, defensively, with about as much reserve as Zachary Quinto can muster.

.

The beard grows so long Chris actually takes to combing it.

“What the hell are you doing?” Zach finally blurts one morning, when he walks into the bathroom in a pair of yoga pants and finds Chris poking at himself in the mirror.

Chris glowers at him, brushes his fingers through the inch-or-maybe-two of beard, and snaps, “I’m picking breakfast off of my face, what does it look like?”

“You’re different than I remembered you,” Zach says after a second of quiet, already making his way to the shower, pants coming off right around the time Chris grosses himself out when he realizes he has facial hair hanging over his top lip.

The girlfriend he had in ninth grade would be really happy for him.

.

Secretly, Zach knows exactly what this is all about.

He just wants to know how far Chris will actually go, in proving his semi passive aggressive relationship with grooming products.

(The answer turns out to be almost three inches long.)


	35. modern love gets me to the church on time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MPREG/crack. Zach gets knocked up, Chris has to deal (and tread lightly.) For m_lasha.

“Don’t you,” He cuts himself off as his body heaves again, the fact that he still hasn’t eaten yet this morning making them dry and uncomfortable as he rests his forehead against the toilet seat and tries to take a deep breath. Zach manages to right himself long enough to shout through the door, “Dare leave.”

Chris is sitting outside in the hallway, knees pulled up with his arms rested on them both. Apparently Zach has too much pride to let Chris see him puking, but not enough to let Chris out of a six foot radius.

”Are you okay?” Chris asks, turning his head towards the door when he hears Zach cough and spit again, chest heaving one more time.

There’s a stretch of silence before the toilet flushes and then Zach is standing in the doorway, looking a little paler than normal, but not as close to death as Chris was imagining him as.

”I’m peachy,” He manages, as Chris tips his head back enough to look right up at him.

.

“Thanks,” Zach accepts the single piece of toast Chris gives him, and crawls back into bed, flipping the bed covers back with a little too much force.

Chris tries not to let Zach see him yawn as he walks around the base of the bed, trying to make his way towards his side: it’s barely five in the morning, and most of outside is still baked in thick darkness.

“Do you need anything else?” He asks, crawling back into his side of the bed, watching as Zach eats his toast one-handed, brushing the crumbs off of his chest with one hand as the other twists the toast around for maximum bite-potential.

After swallowing, Zach shakes his head and replies, “I don’t think so. I might puke again, though.”

”Okay.” Now Chris doesn’t know whether he should actually get back into bed, or not. This sounds like some kind of Zach-code. “…Do you want a bucket?”

Zach offers him an offended glare before shoving the last of the toast in his mouth and replying, words both muffled and insulted, “I don’t need a bucket. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Chris answers after a second, still stuck in that purgatory with one knee on the bed as he tries to figure out what to do. He laughs once, belatedly. “Getting back into bed?”

Swallowing, Zach rolls his eyes and pats Chris’ side of the bed, his now toast-free hand settling down on the ridiculously slight bump of his stomach.

“Morning news is starting,” He supplies, gesturing to the bright light of the TV, glaring in the otherwise dim of the room.

Chris nods and gets himself back into bed, rolling over on his side to watch Zach’s profile instead of the TV. He really doesn’t look as bad as Chris was expecting, especially after his mother had warned them of all the terrible things that had happened to her when she was carrying Zach.

So that was really reassuring to hear about.

“Did you see this?” Zach asks, gesturing towards the TV as he slides down a little in bed, moving so he’s laying on one elbow beside Chris instead of propped up against the cushions. “This kid is from Bear Lake and he’s going to climb Everest.”

Eyes already drooping a little, Chris makes an agreeable sort of noise, and then begins to fade into sleep, subconscious going hazy until Zach shifts against him again, and jerks him a fraction out of it.

”You make me feel better, you know,” Zach says quietly; Chris can hear the blare of a KTLA promo commercial in the background. He smiles a little despite himself, still unfocused and sleepy as he reaches up to hug Zach closer to him. “You always make me feel better.”


	36. round one: joanna krupa vs. christina hendricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris thinks Zach should figure out what the shift key is for. Zach thinks Chris should suck it. For cedarrapidsgirl.

For most guys Chris’ age, technology is a big thing. The newest gaming console, an entire back catalogue of DVDs and Special Editions, Apple Anything, sweet electronic trinkets and any kind of hacking.

Chris, however, does not subscribe to this list of interests. He’s the only guy in maybe the entire existence of Los Angeles that is a big enough plebe to not only subscribe to The New York Times, but actually care enough to get the hardcopy instead of the online version.

He doesn’t have an official website. The last time he used Google it was to search for MSN. Facebook, well, any kind of social networking, really, is nothing more than a scab on the horizon of humanity. He’d rather spend money on music and movies than download and burn them.

For all intents and purposes, Chris should really still be living by candlelight, and stamping all of his letters with wax seals. This, Zach figures, is why he doesn’t understand, nor appreciate, Twitter. Or texting. Or the usage of not having to use proper capitalization, grammar, and punctuation in every message.

Zach figures that, if he were sending said messages by carrier pigeon, he may rethink his penmanship. Being that he’s sending 150 character messages to people he doesn’t know, he figures he can skip the shift button if he feels like it.

“Joe agrees with me, you know,” Chris continues, watching as Zach continues to tap away at the screen of his iPhone.

Mostly distracted, Zach raises his eyebrows and replies, “Joe also agrees that Joanna Krupa is the hottest woman in America. And that doesn’t help your case.”

“She’s pretty,” Chris argues without realizing, stretching himself down the couch so he can jab his feet into the side of Zach’s thigh annoyingly. “You don’t think she’s hot?”

Zach drops one hand down to hold onto Chris’ bare ankle and tries to type the remainder of his tweet with only a thumb.

“Christina Hendricks,” He replies, hand trailing up to Chris’ calf as he posts his new message and then closes the app, turning to look at Chris properly. “Joanna Krupa looks like a doll.”

Smirking, Chris lifts his other leg to press the arch of his foot against the side of Zach’s face.

“The point is that you type like a drunk person using a broken keyboard,” He says, digging his toes into the curve of Zach’s cheekbone. Zach flails, almost dropping his phone as he reaches up to pull Chris’ leg away by the hem of his pants.

Zach wrestles the leg down into his lap and says, “It’s artistic. Freeform.”

”Lazy and delusional,” Chris counters, narrowing his eyes. Zach laughs a little despite his better judgment.

Pinching the skin of Chris’ ankle between his fingers, Zach sets his phone down on the side table and replies, mimicking Chris’ tone of voice, “Lazy and delusional.”

“Sometimes I hate you,” Chris replies, but he’s laughing.


	37. some heads are gonna roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New York and Australia means a long distance relationship. For nudeonthemoon.

“It couldn’t be that hard to just…” Chris starts by saying, and sure, his voice starts off pretty confident, but it also trails a little halfway through before cutting short altogether.

Zach looks over from where he’s trying to sauté mushrooms without too much eavesdropping, and reaches for his wineglass with one hand, blindly.

“Politics,” He tells Noah, maybe a little buzzed from the alcohol already, as he swills the glass a bit, and stirs his mushrooms.

Across the room, Chris is sitting tense at the kitchen table, a notebook and a pile of assorted documents laying in front of him.

“Amy, come on, I never said that you weren’t trying, I just,” He pauses and listens for another half-moment, before continuing, “It’s just frustrating, and…”

Throwing back the last mouthful of the wine, Zach shakes his head, sets the stem glass back down on the counter top, and tries not to scrape the teflon of his good pan with one too many angry stirs.

.

“We’ll figure it out,” Zach tells him, half an hour later, when the mushrooms are burnt and they’re both standing in the living room, in-between the couch and coffee table with their arms wrapped around each other in a tight hug. “Mark will just move something around, the eight month thing won’t happen.”

Chris nods into the warmth of Zach’s shoulder, but his gaze is stuck at the point in front of him, where wall meets hardwood floor.

.

Zach is masochistic at the best of times, but speaking to his manager the next day ends up being even worse than the time he tried autoerotic asphyxiation.

“I just don’t believe that there is no way to change the scheduling,” He grimaces, rubbing the line between his eyebrows with the round of his palm. “You’re telling me that we can’t even postpone by a week.”

Calm, as usual, Mark replies, “I could if I would, Zach, but it’s just not feasible.”

”Feasible,” Zach repeats, sounding distant. He scratches the hand over the top of his head and through his hair. “Of course not.”

.

“How do you do the long distance thing, anyways?” His PA asks the second day of production. She’s also standing a foot in front of him, holding a paper tray loaded with coffee as she eyes the snow falling over their heads.

Chris blows into the palms of his bare hands, and then reaches for a coffee.

”Oh, you know,” He says after a second, half-smiling. “We manage.”

.

Zach gets back to his hotel after a thirteen hour filming day, still covered in remnants of makeup and set dust. Despite Karl’s assurances, Australia is way hotter than he expected it to be at this time of the year, and he finds himself in a constant state of sweating all over everything.

“It’s gross,” He says, scrubbing a towel over his face as he settles himself in the middle cushion of the couch, television on low in the background and room service about ten minutes away from delivery. “The fact that I’m from Pittsburgh probably doesn’t help.”

On the laptop screen, Chris laughs, a little jerky from the suddenly laggy connection.

“The fact that you’re from Pittsburgh never helps,” He replies, voice still groggy from waking up such a short amount of time ago. “You should just learn to remember that.”

Laughing despite himself, Zach shakes his head, and pretends to fold the screen of the laptop down, laughing even harder when Chris makes a quick noise of indignation and then yelps, trying to save himself, “Don’t shut me off! Don’t shut me off!”

”I miss you,” Zach says, out of nowhere, as he sets the laptop back upright on the coffee table, and looks at Chris’ expression for just a minute too long.

There’s a quiet moment that transpires between them before Chris replies, voice just as soft and expression now completely sober, “Miss you, too.”


	38. some unholy war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris is convinced Noah is set out to fuck up his sex life. It's probably true. For htebazytook.

At 2:43 in the morning, Zach staggers out of bed half-hard to slip on a pair of flip-flops, pull most of his clothing back on, and clip a leash onto Noah’s collar.

Three minutes later, at approximately 2:46, Chris comes to a conclusion.

The dog is out to end his sex life.

.

“You’re incredibly peculiar when you’re tired,” Zach laughs at him the next morning, spooning coffee grounds into his percolator. “Noah is not cock-blocking you.”

Chris frowns, and pokes the bottom layer of his cereal with a spoon.

“Zach, listen,” He says, spooning a healthy mouthful of Cheerios halfway out of the bowl. They wobble uncertainly in the air. “I’ve had a semi-serious case of blue balls every night for the last eleven days.”

Zach comes over to the table, and sets his plate full of cut grapefruit down before pulling his chair back to sit down.

“You’re being dramatic,” He says.

Frowning, Chris finally commits and shovels the cereal into his mouth, gaze trailing uneasily across the floor to finally settle on Noah, otherwise happy and sleeping in the corner, empty food bowl by his foot.

“I’m not being dramatic,” He finally replies, swallowing.

.

Unsurprisingly, it happens again that night.

“I’ll be back in like, three minutes,” Zach sighs, leaning down to kiss Chris one more time before he trails Noah out of the room. “Chill out.”

Chris frowns but lays back against the pillows regardless, jerking the sheets up over his hips so at least he won’t freeze during Zach’s bathroom jaunt with the dog out into the front yard.

He seriously can’t wait for Zach to finish his renos and get the damned fence put up.

.

“Here,” Chris hands Zach Noah’s leash just as they’re en route to bed, Zach’s face already washed, his hair fluffy and freshly air dried from his shower.

Zach raises his eyebrows and makes a face.

“He went out twenty minutes ago babe, he’s old but he’s not… leaky,” Zach says, but accepts the leash anyways, scratching behind an ear with his free hand.

Making a face, Chris gives him a little shove towards the back door.

“Don’t say leaky,” He instructs.

.

An hour and a half later, when they’re just getting to the good stuff, Noah wanders in, and rests his chin against the edge of the mattress, big puppy eyes watching, just waiting for Zach to notice him and pay attention.

“No,” Chris groans, as Zach pulls away.

Zach offers him a little laugh and a grin, and this time doesn’t even give him a reparation kiss before wandering out of the room.

.

“You clearly don’t like me,” Chris tells Noah the next day, when Zach has run out to the car for his forgotten jacket and cigarettes by proxy. “And I kind of like you, but you’re really making it difficult for me.”

Noah offers him an open-mouthed doggy grin and a wag of the tail.

Chris suspects this may be a war he will be waging for years.


	39. spoonful weighs a ton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grocery stores aren't as fun unless you're shopping together. For takki.

Chris very quickly comes to realize that he actually has no idea what Zach likes to eat when he’s four aisles away, trying to decide between edamame and what seems like your regular, run of the mill green bean.

edamame: confirm or deny? He texts, lurking at the very edge of the aisle as he watches other shoppers, seemingly much more together than he is, as they approach the offending produce shelf and poke through it with enthusiasm.

There’s a good forty second delay in-between his sending of the text and the receiving of Zach’s reply, which comes riddled with accidental spaces and caps. Only if you can Get seapoint brand.others are gross.

okay. Chris texts back, rendezvous in the frozen foods aisle?

As he waits for the reply, Chris re-approaches the produce shelf and quickly locates the appropriate Zach-approved edamame brand. As he’s setting it in his basket, right between the thing of raspberries and a random pack of jerky he got a sudden hankering for, his phone vibrates.

Yeah, frozen bags of fruit really Get me going.

Laughing despite himself, Chris heads around the corner of the aisle and begins to amble past the following aisles, glancing down each one as he goes. He gets all the way down to aisle eight before he glimpses the familiar side-profile of the other half of his grocery shopping team, bent down on both knees as he studies a price sign up close.

“What are you doing?” Chris asks, approaching.

Zach jerks a little bit, but recovers enough to grin over his shoulder and reply, eyebrows raising, “I couldn’t remember if you liked Barila or Chow Bella.”


	40. turbo lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris ponders the logistics of using a shower for sex. For takki.

“I’m just saying,” Chris amends, stepping to the side as Zach reaches forwards for his shampoo bottle. “It’s the perfect environment to get laid. It’s wet, it’s dark, it’s, you know. Moist?”

Zach squirts some shampoo into the palm of his hand.

“Don’t say moist,” He says, shaking his head.

Shrugging, Chris steps under the spray, and tips his head back, eyeing the ceiling as the shower water rinses the shampoo out of his head.

“Moist,” He says after a second, as an afterthought as he pulls his head back upright and grins at the disgusted look Zach gives him. “You can come all over the place, automatic clean-up.”

Zach starts rubbing the shampoo into his hair.

“I was open to the concept of shower fucking until you started trying to sell me on it, you know,” He replies, watching as Chris grins back at him, beginning to rub soap over his chest. “And I can tell you’re trying to flex. Stop it, it’s totally weirding me out.”

Laughing, Chris brings his hand up and starts trailing the soap back and forth over the round of the front of Zach’s shoulder, eyebrows raising as the shower water mists down over his forehead.

“I’ll be your soap-boy,” He continues, still heading down his path of turning Zach off of showers forever as he squeezes the soap too hard and it shoots up, hitting Zach in the jaw before falling to the tile floor.

Zach rolls his eyes and laughs, manhandling Chris out of the way so he can get under the spray himself, and then holding him an arm’s length out of the water, until Chris starts to laugh and fight back, feet squeaking against the ground.

“I’m freezing, let me back in,” He pleads, laughing still, until Zach relents and relaxes his arms, letting Chris share the spray with him, arms sliding low around his waist.


	41. vertigo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris drives Zach's car. For carry_on.

Technically, Chris has a current, registered Californian license, and no reason for the state to pull it. The state also doesn’t know what Zach knows.

Namely that Chris is maybe the worst driver Zach has ever met, his mother included.

“Oh my god,” Zach intones, covering his eyes with both hands when Chris cuts in front of some blonde girl on a moped going all of 35mph. He pulls his hands away, and peeks past one of them, eyeing the dashboard. “Chris, slow down.”

Chris grimaces, and adjusts his grip on the steering wheel. “I’m going 60, Zach.”

”The limit is,” Zach turns in his seat to read a sign as it goes flying by. “35. And you’re going 75.”

Shrugging, Chris changes lanes again without bothering to shoulder check – apparently, in Chris Land, it’s appropriate to only check the rearview mirror before cutting people off and almost causing rear enders.

“Everybody is going 70,” Chris shrugs, as they fly past three cars definitely not going a tick over 45.

Zach sits back in his seat and cracks the window open an inch, trying to breathe as deeply as he can through his nose. He’s totally zen enough to deal with this. He’ll just never let Chris drive his car, possibly ever again.

“I get that you have a thing for cops,” He says after a moment of silence, watching Chris as he plays with the panel of buttons under the main dash. “But this is really pushing it.”


	42. what do you do with a revolution?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upon moving in together, Chris and Zach realize that their wardrobes will have to be consolidated. For paitac.

There are ground rules, and verbal agreements, and the measuring of all closet-y space on the first floor. Zach debates hiring a lawyer, and Chris safeguards his heavy knits in a laundry basket under his office desk until Zach promises not to box them up or, worse yet, throw them away.

It happens on a Friday morning, when regular couples are getting up and getting ready to go to work, or plan their wedding, or have a quick bite to eat before yoga and conference calls.

For Zach and Chris, Friday morning starts at 5:45am, when they both roll out of bed and divvy up making toast and fetching the newspaper from the front stoop.

“Alright,” Chris sighs at 6:15, pushing his plate across the kitchen table, wiping his hands against one another, and reaching for the crease of Zach’s newspaper with one finger. “I think it’s time to start.”

.

“It’ll be a 50/50 split of this closet, and then that dresser will be mine, and you can have the one beside the bed,” Zach recites, scrolling through a Notepad file on his iPhone with one thumb.

There had been the thought of charts, too, but then he couldn’t figure out how to get that App to work.

“That’s fair, okay, good,” Chris agrees, already bending down to crack open one of his cardboard boxes. Zach has pre-emptied all of his closets, and is currently standing in a veritable pit of all of his clothing.

The only items that have made it from a laundry basket or garbage bag unscathed are his nice suits hanging up in the hall closet, which Chris decided early on wasn’t a foul.

“We have,” Chris checks his wristwatch: he’s the only man Zach has seen in LA in the last six years to actually still wear one. “Exactly twelve hours. We better get started.”

.

Surprisingly, the big clothing move-in goes well. Perfect, Zach would say – in fact, almost too much so.

When his hats start to disappear exactly three days later, Zach immediately jumps to conclusions, and begins to throw out Chris’ dumb shoe-slippers in retaliation.

.

“Truce,” Chris says to him two days later, after walking in the front door after the gym.

So far, Zach has thrown away two pairs of slippers, one very ugly pair of sweatpants, an unfortunate looking hat (it would have looked better on him), and a pair of butter yellow socks.

He has also lost three of his favourite hats, one of the hoodies he got from American Apparel before they stopped carrying the striped line, a floral button down shirt, and a pair of sneakers.

“Truce,” Chris agrees, toeing off the shoes Zach was going to throw out next.


	43. whole foods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid!fic. Chris and Zach have a son, Nolan, argue, and try to grocery shop. For vapid_wastrel.

“Babe I’m just saying, I think that it’ll be easier if I get a flight the day before,” Zach continues, bending down mid-sentence to pull the box of animal crackers from Nolan’s death grip, and place them back onto the shelf.

Bent over the handlebar of their shopping cart, Chris frowns to nobody in particular and comes to a rolling stop in front of a display stacked high with fruit snacks.

“I get what you’re saying,” Chris sighs, watching as Nolan pulls a face at Zach for shutting him down on the animal cracker front.

Chris flicks his gaze back up towards Zach’s face, just as Zach catches Nolan by the back of the shirt before he has a chance to dart back for the box.

“He’s got a thing of – ” Chris starts, but then cuts himself off when he realizes Zach has already caught onto the bag of Oreos Nolan is now trying to lob into the cart. “I just think that we should fly together.”

Zach sets the Oreos back in their rightful place on the shelf, maybe with a little too much force, and then turns around, picking Nolan right up off of the floor, lanky toddler body and all.

“If someone finds out we’re arriving together, you know what will be waiting for us at the airport,” Zach sighs, trying to fix Nolan’s twisted-around shirt as they resume walking (or, for Chris, rolling) again.

As they round the aisle’s corner and start into the next, Nolan finally decides to pay attention to the conversation happening in front of him, instead of just concentrating on what food he’s going to sneak into the cart next.

“Where are we going?” He asks Zach, one hand twisting into the collar of his t-shirt.

Chris stops in front of a display of frozen pizzas as Zach answers, “New York.”

”With the pretzels?” Nolan asks, clarifying. The kid, uh. He always has had an affinity for food.

Despite himself, Zach laughs, and pointedly ignores Chris tossing frozen pizza after frozen pizza into the bottom of the cart.

“Yes, with the pretzels,” He answers, leaning in to smack a dry kiss on his cheek before stooping over to set him back down on the floor.

As soon as his feet are flat on the linoleum, he’s off again.

“Look, just. Say we arrive separately,” Chris starts their Conversation of the Day again, as they follow after Nolan, one of the cart’s wheels making a weird rhythmic noise against the floor. “And you get there one day before me, that’s fine for you, but then I’ve got to deal with all the photographers who are gonna know we’re coming right after.”

Zach doesn’t have a reply for that as they start down the next aisle, pausing to grab two jars of pesto before continuing on.

“I would just, you know. Rather we deal with it together, once, instead of separately, twice,” Chris finishes, and damned if it isn’t the most grown-up way he’s looked at the situation in maybe his whole adult life.

Up ahead, Nolan has stationed himself on the floor, and is playing with four cans of tomato paste and a packet of sauce.

“Alright,” Zach concedes without much more argument, finally recognizing Chris’ point as valid. He falls into step beside Chris, and shrugs with the shoulder closest to him. “We’ll arrive together. I was just, you know. I thought I could get to the hotel first to get everything straightened out, that’s all.”

Chris smiles a little and nods. “I know.”

”Nolan,” Zach groans, interrupting their conversation as they approach their son, happily stacking the cans of food, one on top of the other.

As Chris pushes the cart right past them, because he is clearly not the more zen and resilient out of the two of them, to be dealing with a situation like this, Zach crouches down, and begins demolishing the can empire.

He places them back up on the shelf, one by one.


	44. you'll find it hiding in cupboards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris decides to investigate the supernatural. Zach is dragged along. For davyjonesing.

“Oh my god,” Zach exasperates, stopping halfway up the stairs long enough to turn around and give Chris the stink-eye. “Can’t you walk quietly?”

Chris frowns and adjusts the viewfinder of the handheld camera.

“I tripped on the stair,” He explains, sounding a little offended himself. “It’s hard to see with the night vision on.”

Leveling Chris with a stare, Zach replies, “What are you, Paris Hilton? Turn the camera off.”

”No way!” Chris gets a face full of ass when Zach turns around on the step abruptly and continues on their journey upwards, toward the attic landing, which Chris has convinced them both has some kind of ghostly resident.

It only took two episodes of Ghost Hunters, one episode of Psychic Investigators, and two and a half of Supernatural to sway Zach as well.

“I told you to read that article,” Chris continues up after him, sounding way more wounded than he has any right to be. “The human eye can’t see certain apparitions, sometimes.”

Zach pauses at the top landing, and says over his shoulder, “Don’t use ‘apparitions’ when you’re being serious.”

”Don’t be such a word nazi,” Chris replies, peeking the camera over Zach’s shoulder.

There’s a pause before Zach admonishes, “I’m not going in first, you’re the ghost expert.”

”I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff,” Chris whispers back, pushing Zach in the lower back a couple of times for good measure. “You go in first. I don’t have my glasses.”

Zach rolls his eyes and inches into the hallway nobody ever walks through, being that its only contents are a rickety stairwell that pulls down from the ceiling. The wiring in the light fixtures apparently stopped working a long time ago, too.

“If I go up first,” Zach begins to bargain, pausing where he stands with one arm stretched up over his head, his t-shirt riding up his belly. “I never have to play ghost hunters with you ever again.”

Frowning, Chris adjusts the auto-focus on the camera, and says, “If I agree to that, you and I both know I’ll be lying.”


	45. he too square for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something simple and cute like C/Z flirting before or after one of the STID press interviews!

"Your hair is out of control right now."

Zach glances over from where he had been flipping through the morning’s news on his iPhone, and raises an eyebrow at Chris’ reflection, mirrored back at him over the line of the bathroom counter.

"Are you seriously saying that with a straight face right now?" He asks, gesturing back at Chris in the mirror. “You’re still challenged by washing your hands without dripping water all over your shirt."

Rolling his eyes, Chris turns off the tap, and flails his hands around in lieu of properly drying them off. “Bad hair trumps sink water."

"You said my hair is out of control. Out of control does not equal bad," Zach replies, pushing himself away from the wall, putting his iPhone back into his shirt pocket. “Spilling all over yourself, however? Generally equals slob."

Chris wipes his damp hands over the sides of his jeans, and raises his eyebrows as Zach reaches forward to jab at the front of Chris’ shirt. As an afterthought, he loops his finger through the fabric separating two buttons, and uses it to tug Chris closer to him, and away from the sink.

"See if this slob sucks your dick tonight," Chris says, which startles a genuinely loud laugh out of Zach. Zach, who was basically born equipped with a massive soft spot for obscene humor. 

At the reaction Chris laughs too, and steps forward, crushing them together and trapping Zach’s hand between their chests.

"In my varied research over the years, I’ve generally found that slobs give the best blowjobs," He says, which makes Chris laugh. “So you do have me in your corner there."

Leaning his face in against the curve of Zach’s throat, Chris shuffles his feet in a bit closer, and says, “Want me to splash some more water on my tits?"

"Soaking wet adonis," Zach whispers, which makes them both crack up, Zach’s arm still wrapped around Chris’ shoulders, both of Chris’ hands now on Zach’s hips. 

They stay that way, laughing, until an assistant knocks on the frame of the bathroom door, and calls them back to set.


	46. finish line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris and Zach have their first kiss at a cliche place, and then laugh about it.

"This is seriously freaking me out," Zach says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Chris leans forward and the entire gondola rolls forward, following Chris’ weight as he looks at the ground, squinting his eyes.

"Lets talk about clowns," He says, finding one out in the crowd, and pointing at it. He glances at Zach over his shoulder, and raises his eyebrow at the pained expression on Zach’s face. “Or not. Heights scare you more than those face-painted freaks?"

White knuckling the safety bar over their knees, Zach still manages to sound more unimpressed than terrified as he says, “Yeah."

"We’re totally safe, man, don’t worry," Chris placates, leaning back in his seat, which rolls the entire gondola backwards, just enough to send Zach’s stomach down into his toes as his center of gravity changes.

Clenching his teeth together, Zach says, “If you move one more time I will kill you."

"Sorry." Chris slowly extends his arm to wrap around the back of the metal seat, around Zach’s shoulders. He stares at the side of Zach’s face as the ferris wheel begins its third descent, their gondola creeping up the backside before breaking over the top curve. They both sway a little bit as the come back around, and Chris says, sounding amused, “I’ve never seen you freak out before."

Zach glares at Chris out of the corner of his eyes. “Well, here I am. Sufficiently terrified."

"Zach," Chris says, voice sounding different, and Zach has enough time to turn his head an inch in Chris’ direction before Chris grabs him by the jaw and kisses him, nose pressed against the curve of his cheek from the angle.

It’s only a moment and Chris almost instantly let go, somehow looking relieved as Zach stares back at him.

"I can’t believe you just did that for the first time on a ferris wheel," He says, startled.

Chris shrugs one shoulder and shifts a little bit in the seat, which sends the gondola rocking again, and then they’re both laughing, totally cracking up as they begin the descent of their last circuit.

"I can’t believe you just did that for the first time on a ferris wheel," Zach repeats, but he looks happy, now.


	47. slow show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, inspired by that photoset you reblogged, how about recently-married!Pinto or old-marrieds!Pinto fic?

The living room is dark when he gets home.

Chris shuffles in the front door, juggling his luggage, two weeks worth of mail, and three newspapers that were delivered before he remembered to call and cancel the remaining month’s issues.

Swearing under his breath, he gets the sunglasses up and off of his nose, pushing them to the top of his head as he kicks the front door closed. Distantly he hears the cab pull away from the curb as he flips the overhead light on.

The place is full of stale air after being totally airlocked for the month he was gone. Lucky thing Joe was still kicking around the first two weeks the house was otherwise empty, though Chris can see evidence of his existence and departure in the form of chinese takeout menus on the coffee table, and Zach’s flip-flops stepped out of near the kitchen doorway.

"Fuck it’s good to be home," Chris sighs, under his breath, unceremoniously dumping his luggage, the mail, and his sunglasses on the couch.

~

Zach slams the trunk of the taxi and hoists his duffel over one shoulder, waving at the driver through the back window as he steps up onto the sidewalk.

He feels the first tendrils of pet owner guilt as he reconsiders going to pick up Noah from his cushy accomodation in West Hollywood, but the cab is already halfway down the street and he is already way too committed to the idea of sleeping for about a day and a half right now.

The lights are on in the front window and on the porch, and Zach feels the slow swoop of delight in his stomach as he heads up the front steps, readjusting the bag over his shoulder as he reaches for the doorknob with his free hand. 

Even though the front entry and living room are both empty, Zach can hear movement in the house. There’s a trail of lights that are on that lead all the way back to the kitchen, where the french doors are swung wide open onto the deck.

Without thinking about it, Zach drops his carry-on at his feet, and heads towards the back doors.

~

Chris is just lighting up his last Marlboro of the night when Zach steps through from the kitchen and makes him jump.

"Surprise," Zach grins, arms already stretching out as Chris makes a noise that sounds like “whuh" and almost bites through the filter of his cigarette.

Laughing at the expression on Chris face, Zach pulls him forward until his nose is pressed against the inside of Zach’s shoulder, and then they’re hugging tight, the muscles in Zach’s forearms bulging where they rest around the back of Chris’ neck.

"I thought you were in New York until Sunday," Chris says, laughing now, his arms tightening to return the embrace before he pulls his head back and kisses Zach instead, hands sliding up until his thumbs frame either side of Zach’s throat.

Zach pulls away and flips his hair to the side. “I was - until I remembered an important event happened today, which happens to be a Thursday."

"Goddamn Thursday," Chris whispers, going back in for a hug as Zach laughs and says, “Happy anniversary."


	48. northern downpour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A coffee shop AU where one of them works behind the counter and the other slowly falls in love/starts liking them.

"Hey man, I see you around here a lot," Chris says, haphazardly scrawling ZACH onto a plastic cup with black marker. “You go to UCLA?"

Zach looks up from his phone and shakes his head, “Just moved into the neighborhood, actually. I work at the art gallery on Hyperion."

"Oh no shit!" Chris grins, mixing a cold drink on autopilot. “My mom hosted a fundraiser for that place last September."

Smiling a little at the excited tone in Chris’ voice, Zach sets his phone down, and says, “Ah, I only got here in October."

"Well," Chris shrugs and wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. He grins over at Zach, “There’s always next time, right?"

~

"I can see the Christmas spirit is deep within you," Zach says one night, walking up to the counter when Chris’ back is turned.

Chris, who is swearing under his breath and fighting with a roll of quarters, spins around, almost knocking a promotional eggnog sign off of the counter in the process.

"I am alive with holiday joy," Chris intones, rolling his eyes. “You’re not here for more nog, are you?"

Zach shakes his head and leans against the order counter. “No anything, actually. Just heading back from the staff holiday party, saw you through the window. Do people even drink coffee at nine at night?"

"You’d be surprised what some people do," Chris smirks, studying Zach’s face. “The whole looking at me through the window thing is a little single white female, though, dude."

Laughing, Zach pushes his hair off of his forehead, and says, “Whatever, I’m drunk enough not to care."

"Yeah?" Chris asks, and then Zach is nodding and they’re laughing again.

~

It’s the morning rush, and Zach has delegated himself to standing just inside the front door while he waits for the mass of people in front of him to clear out. His umbrella is dripping wet, his glasses are fogging up, and he’s got about ten minutes left in his lunch break.

He is, however, also a man with a mission.

Chris is totally gongshowed, Sharpie behind one ear and red apron covered in various types of liquid as he rushes back and forth between the cash register and the order counter. His glasses seem to always be in a state of falling off, or are constantly being pushed up the bridge of his nose with a moment’s worth of free hands.

Zach waits until there’s a lull in customers, and only one woman remains at the order counter, and a couple waiting for pick-up.

"Hey," He greets, coming to stand at the counter.

Chris glances up from where he’s making a frap, and shakes his head, “Hey, sorry, I didn’t see you in line. Gimme a second and I’ll get your drink."

"Oh no, no," Zach’s saying, almost apologizing as he smiles at the couple standing behind him over his shoulder. “Actually I was just wondering if you wanted to go out for dinner tonight."

Chris stops what he’s doing, hand halfway to a cannister of whipped cream, as his head whips around and he looks at Zach.

"For real?" He asks, which makes Zach burst out laughing.

Zach pushes away from the counter a bit, grin spread out across his face.

"For real, for real," He says, as Chris returns his smile.


	49. coffee's for (c)losers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coffee shop AU! Maybe in San Francisco, since that's where Star Fleet is? Even though it would be Z/C it could be cute. But basically just coffee shop, pleeeaasee

"Are you kidding me right now?"

The incredulous tone stops Chris in his tracks, from where he was attempting to make it from the back stock room to the front order counter with a large number of tea boxes stacked in his arms.

"What?" He asks, as one box falls from his grip, lands on the floor, and bounces a few feet away from them both.

Zach rolls his eyes and bends down to pick the box back up, reaching out to take a few more almost-goners from Chris’ grip as well.

"It’s just tea, right?" Chris grins, watching as Zach adjusts the awkward boxes in his own arms. “No cartons of milk this time."

Shaking his head, Zach starts back to the front of the store, and says to nobody in particular, “You are the both best and the worst employee that anyone could possibly ask for."

"Thanks, man!" Chris grins, following Zach.

Zach laughs and says over his shoulder, “Not necessarily a compliment."

~

"Here," Chris says at Zach’s back, a container of take-out balanced in each hand. “Dinner."

Zach looks away from the stacks of sugar bags, and pulls the pen away from his mouth. “Seriously?"

"Yeah why not?" Chris shrugs, jostling the container. “Stock night can be fun. Like a food service themed date, or something."

Smirking, Zach accepts the box of noodles. “How can I say no?"

"Exactly, you can’t," Chris says, stepping around Zach, and flipping two milk crates over. “Let me direct you to our table."

Zach laughs, putting the stock pen behind his ear, and rubbing one of his eyes behind the lens of his glasses. He only hesitates a moment before sighing and dropping down onto the milk crate, knees almost at his ears.

"See man, we can have a minute," Chris says, settling down on his own milk crate opposite Zach. “It’s only eight o’clock, anyway. We’re making awesome time."

The look Zach gives him is weary at best, but still amused around the edges.

~

"You should go to art school or something," Zach says, watching Chris draw on the chalkboard sign.

Chris looks up from his crooked, blurry lettering, and raises his eyebrows. “Yeah?"

"Yeah, definitely." Crossing his arm, Zach nods, and tilts his head to the side. “Is that a heart?"

Settling back onto his haunches, Chris shakes his head. “No man, that’s cupid."

"Warm up your Valentine this Friday," Zach reads, stumbling a bit over the awkwardly lettered chalk words. “With our special hearts afire dark blend."

Chris shrugs. “I made it up."

"I see that," Zach laughs, turning as he prepares to go back into the coffee shop. “You’re on break soon right?"

Using the sign as a tool to right himself, Chris stands up and nods, wiping his chalk-y palms on the thighs of his jeans.

"Ten minutes," He pauses, then raises his eyebrows. “You wanna go with me to the Valentine’s brunch at Intelligentsia?"

Zach pauses, hand on the door, one foot up the step.

"That’s our competition," He says, awkwardly.

Chris shuffles from foot to foot, chalk dangling between his fingers. “Yeah."

"Alright," He says, glancing over at Chris with a grin on his face. “Give me a minute to get my jacket."


	50. i don't speak german but i can if you like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: A wild night out in Berlin. (Vague, sorry lol)

"The leather pants are a little much," Chris breathes, before he gulps and groans and tilts his head back against the rough brick wall.

In front of him, Zach makes a face and continues what he was doing before - namely, untucking Chris’ button down shirt from the front of his jeans, and pressing his wet mouth along Chris’ collar.

"Wicker shoes, non-ironic visors, newsboy caps, motherfucking crocs, Christopher,” Zach breathes, unzipping Chris’ jeans.

Throat working as he gulps again, Chris closes his eyes and leans a bit further into the wall as he tries to come up with a rebuttal.

"Your cock feels huge," He says, because he definitely can’t say ‘you’re right.’

Zach grins, wide and sharp and wicked, teeth looking extra white in the dark light of the room, and nods.

"That’s what I thought," He replies, unzipping Chris’ fly.


	51. celebrities against the unethical treatment of animals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt- Harold doesn't like chris (you're a great writer btw) :)

"Fucking, ow!" Chris bitches, arm shooting back, a pained expression on his face as he physically recoils from Zach’s entertainment unit.

Confused, Zach looks up from where he had been texting on the couch, and raises his eyebrows.

"Did you find the power outlet, or something?" He intones, eyes tracking back to his iPhone when the screen lights up with someone’s response. Zach is always on his phone - it’s the second most annoying thing about spending time with at his house instead of Chris’.

The first, of course, is Harold. Who has been set out for Chris’ head on a pike since the first day Chris accidentally stepped on his tail.

"Your stupid cat just tore my hand open," Chris replies, face still all pinched as he shakes his fingers out and then sucks the pad of his thumb, wearily looking back into the shelf, where he had been trying to reach for a DVD.

Zach doesn’t look up from his phone, just replies, “Harold won’t take your shit, man.”

"Fuck," Chris grumbles, stepping over Zach’s coffee table to crash into the couch. He squeezes the rip in his finger and watches as blood beads against the cut, and then glances over at Zach’s face. Zach is finally looking at him with the slightest shred of concern, so Chris uses it to his full advantage, and asks, "Can you put the DVD in, instead?"

Sighing, Zach offers Chris a fond glance, and then gets up off of the couch, saying, “You’re a human disaster.”


	52. you wanna get with me you gotta listen carefully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chris and zach moving in together (prompt)

"That's the last box," Neal says, out of puff and definitely a little red in the face as he drops the liquor box full of Chris' office stuff down onto another box that is simply labelled 'ZQ'. "Isn't there a famous Hollywood actor moving service or something?"

Zach smirks, coming in the front door behind him, and says, "Yeah, it's called Neal Dodson."

"Neal Dodson, the man with a truck," Chris intones, wiping the sweat off of his face with his forearm. "We owe you a beer, man."

Raising his eyebrows, Neal pats a box lid and says, "Many beer."

"Many beer," Chris revises, laughing as he comes to stand next to Zach, in the middle of their new cardboard empire. He assesses the boxes, and makes a low noise. "Man. We have a lot of stuff."

Neal drops down onto the couch, still covered in a protective plastic layer, and kicks his feet up onto a box, sighing, "Yeah, well Zach's been collecting Spice Girls memorabilia since the 90s, so..."

"You're such a dick," Zach replies, no real heat to his words as he throws a ball of packing tape in Neal's general direction and laughs.

Grinning, Chris shakes his head, and looks around. This is his life, and today, it's hit an all-time high.


	53. tell all your friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach comforts Chris after he came out as bisexual and things are rough. And although he's worried about the timing, things happen. For juno-magic.

"This is really fucking embarrassing," Chris says, voice rough as he presses a hand against his forehead. He's totally getting worked up - he know he is - but once he's moved himself into 'emotional wreck' territory, it's really hard to recover.

Beside him, Zach wraps an arm around Chris shoulders and pauses, trying to figure out what to say.

"It's going to be really difficult to deal with at first," He finally settles on, watching as Chris wipes at his face again, eyes pointedly locked on the ground so he doesn't have to meet Zach's gaze. "But I promise you it will get better."

Chris makes a noise and then burbles, "It's just all fucked up."

"I'm here for you, man," Zach says, squeezing the meat of Chris' shoulder a little bit, reassuring.

Exhaling, Chris shakes his head and finally glances over at Zach, eyes bright and blue, even in the dusky late afternoon light. Zach looks back and smiles, rubbing his fingers over the curve of Chris' shoulder again.

It happens really quickly - one second Zach is smiling and the next he feels Chris moving closer to him, the heat of his breath on his face and then they're kissing, one of Chris' hands on his stomach, his hand still rested on Chris' shoulder.

Zach's body reacts before his brain does. He kisses back, his hand moving from Chris' shoulder to the side of his neck as Chris deepens the kiss, making a soft noise as he moves closer.

"Okay," Zach breathes after a second, pulling himself back, leaving one hand on Chris' neck as he tries to get himself together.

Looking out of breath, Chris looks at him and says, "Sorry. The, you know. The timing thing."

"Yeah," Zach says, but then they're both laughing, unable to formulate any other kind of response.

Grinning, still, Chris leans in, and presses his face against Zach's shoulder.


	54. indecent proposals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris notices how many of Zach's fanmails include marriage proposals and he gets jealous.

"Dude, like," Chris pauses, hips canting forward as he relaxes his posture to concentrate on the next few lines of the letter he's reading. After a second he looks up, squinting at Zach through his glasses. "They know you're gay, right?"

Zach is across the room digging through an accordion file folder, trying to find a specific receipt for a hotel he stayed in three independent press tours ago.

"They can chaaaaaange me," Zach replies easily, not sounding too upset about it as he pulls a wad of receipts out and begins leafing through them, in an achingly tedious way. That accordion file folder is basically Chris' version of hell. "Guys never want to marry me, they just want to fuck."

Frowning, Chris picks up the next letter. Sure enough it's from some seventeen year old twink who says he'll send photos if Zach asks.

"This is insane," Chris finally assesses, setting both letters down. The kid offering homemade pornography is one thing, but the girl who wants Zach to move to Ottawa so she can marry him is quite another.

When Zach doesn't reply, Chris looks across the room and realizes that Zach has paused his Tolkien level receipt adventure, and is looking at him instead, a slow, knowing smile creeping its way across his face.

"You're jealous," He says after a second, eyes bright, teeth looking way too bright for someone who drinks and smokes so much.

Chris makes a face, and then makes a noise that sounds like 'pshaw,' and then finally settles on saying, "No I'm not."

"You totally are. Don't worry babe you're the only one I'm laying," He says, going back to the receipts. Chris' stomach dips a little when Zach backtracks and glances across the room, one eyebrow raised, "And future marrying."

Rolling his eyes, trying to recover, Chris glances down at the letter and can't help feeling a little gloat-y as he whispers, "Whatever."


	55. scratch scratches, fire starts with matches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: chris helps zach whose had a hard time with te radiation chamber scene if you're still doing it?? :)

Usually, Zach doesn't have a problem with it.

He can separate himself from Spock easily. Spock looks different than he does, Spock is a different species than he is, Spock has had very few of the same life experiences that Zach has.

It's not so easy for him to separate Chris from Kirk. He knows Chris can - Chris sees the differences between himself and the character - but for Zach, it's just not so straight forward. Sometimes Kirk is just Chris, but with yellow hair.

He asks JJ if they can do the radiation scene early on in the production process, because he knows it's a weight he won't be able to shed until he's shouldered through it. And he's right - he knows himself - the radiation scene gets into his head, it fucks him up, there are flash bang moments when all he sees is Chris laying there, swollen and sick.

In-between takes Chris sits up, decidedly not ill, and waits patiently while makeup shadows his face, sponges purple below his eyes. Chris leans on one elbow, joking around with them, pretending to slap their makeup brushes away, while Zach sits on the other side of the glass trying not to fall off the edge.

Afterwards, Chris bumps his shoulder against Zach's en route to the catering tent.

"You're okay?" He asks, voice quiet, as they turn a bend and Zach sees the familiar signs that point out where the trailers are, where the food is, and where the next crew should go.

Zach offers him a tight smile shrugs, saying, "It's harder to keep everything separated this time."

"Hey - I'm fine, totally healthy," Chris grins, wrapping his arm around Zach's shoulders as a PA runs by them, talking into her headset. "You'll be stuck with me for a long time."


	56. hawaii 911

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: this is vague I know, but...pinto on holiday? :)

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Chris chants, bouncing off of the sidewalk, and landing barefoot on the soft green grass manicured alongside of it.

Cackling, Zach covers the lid of his drink just in case, and carefully side steps the bee's new trajectory. Namely, away from Chris' flying limbs and directly into his own calves.

"Body heat attracts them, just calm down and you'll be fine," Zach explains, voice full board zen master as he uncovers his drink and takes a sip. 

Usually he's not big on the fruity drinks, but it's vacation so he's making an exception for the sick amount of sugar he knows is inside it.

"I just fucking hate... bugs," Chris finally says, trailing off a bit when he stops to listen to see if there is still a bee flying around his head. When the coast is clear he fixes the sunglasses in the V of his t-shirt with one hand, and reaches for Zach's free hand with the other.

Zach sips his drink and accepts Chris' hand back, wrapping his fingers around Chris' in the same way that they had been before Chris bounced off in a classic Pine vs. Nature freakout.

"I totally killed a spider in the sink this morning and didn't tell you," Zach says, before cracking up at the offended look Chris gives him in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst... submit your own request at chrisandzach.tumblr.com


	57. manbearpig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris gets a dog of his own and he and Zach start going on doggy dates together

"Why is mine so badly behaved," Chris intones, stepping around the leash tangled around his feet as he looks over to Zach, Noah and Skunk, who are a perfect trifecta of The Best Way To Train Your Dog.

Smiling, Zach watches Chris step out of his flip-flop while trying to maneuver a leg over and around the leash. After a second he shrugs and says, "Bear just doesn't play your games, man."

"Ha-ha," Chris answers, scowling as he finally gets both himself and his dog righted. Bear looks back at him, eyes googly, tongue hanging a foot out of his mouth as he pants hard. Chris' heart softens a little, like it does when he watches Internet clips of people falling, and he says, only a little disappointed sounding, "Bear, come on."

He and Zach continue down the street, Zach's dogs sniffing at the ground and walking ahead while Bear zig-zags and makes Chris' hairline all sweaty as he tries to reel him back in.

"He's a good boy, man," Zach says, watching Bear's back as he takes off into a pile of freshly cut grass. "He's just a baby dog."

A warm smile spreads itself across Chris' face as he sidesteps and elbows Zach a little, asking, "Puppies?"

"Baby dogs, man," Zach says, elbowing Chris back a little.

Chris laughs as they fall into step, only a few blocks left before they're home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst! Submit your own prompt at http://chrisandzach.tumblr.com :)


	58. @chrispine (aka "fancy")

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: chris gets a twitter account.

"What am I supposed to say?" Chris asks, confusion totally etched across his face as he accepts his phone back from Zach.

Zach flaps a hand at him and looks back at his own phone screen, where he's scrolling through his own Twitter feed and generally looking a lot more connected to the digital age than Chris feels.

"Anything you want," He finally answers, vague as ever.

Knotting his eyebrows, Chris frowns and looks down at the little screen of his phone, way too small to compose anything clever on. He needs like, a pen and a notebook and at least one cup of coffee...

 _first things first i'm the realest_ , he types, and it makes him laugh so he sends it.

"What did you say?" Zach asks, dragging his own gaze away from his phone to raise an eyebrow in Chris' direction. Chris waves him off, so Zach shrugs, saying, "Alright, I can just check."

Still laughing a little, Chris hears Zach's words on a delay. When they parse through his brain he jerks, surprised, "Wait, people can see this!?"

"Yeah..." Zach trails off, and then makes a face. "What did you think it was?"

Chris bumbles for a second, clearly not knowing what to say, before his words come out in a jumbled, "I don't know, like, a gratitude journal or something? ...What!?"

"Oh my god," Zach replies, voice monotone. He boggles at Chris for a second, and wonders how he has managed to get through life thus far without inflicting brain damage on himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst! Submit your own prompt @ chrisandzach.tumblr.com :)


	59. c a l l calling you now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris drunk dialling Zach (can be established relationship, I don't mind whatever :3)

"Hello?" Zach asks for the third time, making a face when he doesn't get a response. He pulls the phone away from his face, double checks to make sure they're still connected, and then tries again, asking, "Chris?"

There's a pause, a shuffle, and then the sound of someone else's laughter as Chris' voice finally stumbles across the line.

"They're making fun of me because I had the phone upside down," Chris explains, slurring a little bit as Zach clues in and realizes that Chris is drunk. "But fuck 'em."

Laughing, Zach rolls over in bed to toss his book back onto his nightstand. He had been thinking about packing it in for the night when his phone had rung and he'd seen Chris' big dumb face come up on the screen.

"You sound belligerent," Zach continues, the particular tone and cadence of Chris' voice very familiar - full of memories of standoffs in the middle of 711, both of them equally wasted, and trying to leave various Silverlake bars at 2AM. "I miss you anyways."

Chris inhales sharp, because he always smokes like a chimney when he's drunk, and replies, "I miss you too. I phoned you."

"I know, man," Zach replies, laughing a little as he pulls his glasses off and sets them to the side with his paperback, as well. "I'll see you in a week though babe, remember, I'll be back for my birthday."

That seems to subdue Chris' attitude in a hurry. He exhales again, blowing out smoke, and says, "I know. One week. I'll see you soon."


	60. birthday wrapping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: it's zq's birthday!

"Oh my god I'm embarrassed for all of us," Zach sighs, shoulders slumping as Chris fastens a birthday hat on his head. Below him, on the floor, Skunk and Noah stare up at him with matching hats on their heads, too.

Chris takes a step back and picks up two sparklers from the coffee table, where an entire package of them are laying opened. He may or may not have hit up the dollar store in a big way on his way home.

"Hold these," He instructs, waiting for Zach to take them from him before he digs around in his pocket for a lighter.

As Chris lights both sparklers the dogs freak out, barking and jumping at the suddenly on-fire-oh-shit items.

"I liked you much better before you became an amateur photographer," Zach intones, watching as Chris picks his DSLR up off of the coffee table and takes a step back, tongue on his lips as he tries to frame the gigantic 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' banner in the background.

After a second of the dogs not cooperating and Zach's sparklers burning down to nubs, Chris reassesses, handing him two more sparklers and grabbing Skunk by the collar, trying to manually reposition them in front of Zach's feet.

"You can do whatever you want to me on your birthday, but today it's Chris' rules," He explains, licking his lips again, as Skunk finally stays and Zach lights his own sparklers.

Zach forces a grin onto his face as Chris finally takes his photo, but still manages to grind out, "I thought it was the other way around."


	61. peach is in another castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Zach calls Chris Princess to tease him, but Chris blushes prettily, and Zach starts calling him Princess since then. (In case, there's a smut scene, pls make it to bottom!Chris. Thanks!)

The first time Zach says it, it's after Chris has admitted to something particularly WASP-ish.

"You are such a dick sometimes," He laughs, shaking his head as he spoons the sauce out of the pan and onto the two dinners he's been plating for their six o'clock meal. "Princess."

Chris, on the other side of the kitchen island, squawks, and then says nothing. Zach looks up curiously when Chris doesn't shoot off a knee jerk reaction, and raises his eyebrows when he realizes there's a blush creeping up Chris' neck and into his cheekbones.

"The whole Queen of the world thing is pretty hot, actually," Zach continues, setting the pot back on the burner and sucking a drop of sauce from the pad of his thumb. "It's very nuclear family in the sixties. I get to be the daddy, though."

That seems to break Chris' momentary stupor, and he groans, holding onto the counter with both hands as he watches Zach pull open the cutlery drawer and pull out two sets of knives and forks.

"Never say daddy again," Chris manages to say, making a face as he extends one arm to accept the plate Zach hands him.

Zach grins, clearly pleased with himself, and replies, "As long as I get to call you Princess, Princess."

Blushing again, Chris accepts the dinner plate, and tries to not make it obvious he's totally fucking grinning as he makes his way towards the kitchen table.


	62. never give up on the good times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pinto kissing while they both have their big hipster glasses on. Clashing ensues.

"Oh my god, okay, wait," Zach manages, pulling back as Chris tries to move forward with him. Adjusting the glasses on his nose, Zach makes a face and says, "This is so not working."

Chris mirrors the sour face back at him and then holds out both arms, wiggling his fingers as Zach does not immediately move back towards him.

"So we'll figure it out, c'mon," He says, leaning forward to prove his point.

Zach looks like he's considering his options for a second before he finally cooperates and leans forward again, angling his head so they don't accidentally go nose to nose.

A grin on his face, Chris' hands slide up to the sides of Zach's neck, the spots below his ears, as they start kissing deeper, both of them getting back into it after the short detour through prescription glasses land.

"Ow, fuck, wait," Zach says, pulling away sharply, Chris' hands still on his shoulders, mouth open and face hung in mid air. "Sorry, that pinched."

Chris apologizes without meaning to, a knee jerk reaction as he says, "Sorry."

"One of us is going to have to downgrade," Zach says, but he leans back in anyways, which is a win in Chris' book.


	63. still, i will love your shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't even care about the scenario but can I please have some hurt/comfort pinto? Thank youu <3

"Holy shit, are you okay?" Chris asks, bursting into the hospital room with a sick looking, shocked expression on his face. His skin has turned a strange white color, and there is a lot of red and pink around his eyes, which are startlingly blue. "They wouldn't let me in until your brother got here - he's in the waiting room."

Zach is in the hospital bed, hooked up to a bevy of tubes and monitors. His least favorite is the heart rate monitor, which is clipped to the tip of his pointer finger and is just a general nuisance to his fine motor skills.

"I've been better," He replies, not sounding happy about it.

Still frowning, Chris makes his way around the bed, trying to be careful about it as he navigates through Zach's IV lines and other hook ups. Right now, Zach is not a lot unlike the RV his father rented to travel around in one summer - various lines running left and right.

"You scared the fucking shit out of me, goddamnit Zach," Chris breathes, leaning down to wrap his arms around Zach as best he can as he presses his mouth to the side of Zach's head, nose mashed against the bone of Zach's temple.

Belatedly, he realizes that there's a huge purple bruise sprawling up the side of Zach's face that goes from hairline and doesn't disappear until it travels into the top of his hospital nightgown.

"How fast was the guy going? Do they know? Are they going to charge him with anything? What did your lawyer say?" Chris asks, questions coming in a rapidfire style as he brushes his fingers over Zach's face, trying to assess any other damage.

Accepting Chris' various avenues of touching - if Chris was in the hospital bed, Zach knows he would definitely be handling this much worse - Zach shrugs one shoulder, and looks at Chris cross-eyed when Chris leans in again to press his mouth to Zach's forehead again.

"I have no idea, I'm concussed," He manages after a second, and then pats the spot in the mattress next to him.

Chris moves without saying anything else, climbing up onto the bed and wrapping his arms around Zach's waist.

"Tell me if it hurts," He says, voice quiet, pressed into the weird smelling fabric that makes the sleeve of Zach's gown.

Zach, feeling much better now than he'd ever care to admit, nods and presses a little further into Chris.

"I will," He promises.


	64. the season finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: morning after

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm trying not to be weird about it but this is really fucking weird," Chris apologizes, laughing as he presses himself face down into Zach's pillow.

On the opposite pillow Zach cracks up, groaning as he brings a hand up to run through his hair. The front parts all stand up on end, making him look totally fucking crazy, which triggers Chris to laugh some more.

"It is weird, isn't it?" Zach asks, making a face as he stares at the ceiling, and then moves his head, rolling it to the side so he can glance at Chris and raise his eyebrows, nose wrinkling. "Me and you, man. Just - me and you."

Grinning, Chris slides himself across the mattress, crowding up against Zach's side as Zach goes back to staring at the ceiling, still laughing a little under his breath at the absurdity of the situation.

"It's strange when you finally get what you want," Chris says quietly, voice sobering a little bit even though he's still smiling as he wraps an arm around Zach's torso, skin vibrating with excitement.

Zach brings his arm up to rest around Chris' shoulders as he grins, looking down at the crown of Chris' head.

"You're telling me," He agrees, still at a loss for words.


	65. britney from the block

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Either one of them getting caught shower singing?

"Are you seriously kidding me right now?" Zach asks.

A split second later there's the sound of a foot skidding against the bottom of the tub, the shower curtain being pulled, and Chris swearing. Passionately.

"What the fucking - " Chris bitches, his fingers wrapped tightly in the linen curtain as he spins and tries not to fall on his ass.

Zach leans against the bathroom counter, and crosses his arms over his chest. Then he raises his eyebrows and teases, "The dance moves really round out the whole triple threat thing you've got going on right now."

"You scared the shit out of me, jesus christ," Chris breathes, now poking his head out from behind the shower curtain instead of using it as a traveling body shield. "Why are you home?"

Grinning, Zach starts unbuttoning his shirt at the collar.

"Earlier flight. Nice to see you too, by the way," Zach explains, before adding, "Britney may be in your iTunes top ten, but she hardly needs a revival."

Behind the curtain, Chris frowns and blinks when the soap from his head runs down into his eyes. Britney is totally his jam.

"You like Toxic too," He finally says, as Zach's laughter rings out through the bathroom.


	66. the simpsons already did it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Established relationship where zach wakes up from a nightmare about losing chris? Of they're could be cuddling I'd be eternally happy you're fabulous at these :)

"Are you okay? What the hell?" Chris blurts into the darkness of their bedroom, disoriented and half asleep as Zach jerks him awake. Their eyes meet in the twilight of the bedroom and Chris squints, asking, "What happened?"

On the other side of the bed, Zach lets out a shaky breath and tries to snap back into reality.

"Sorry, sorry - I just had a really weird dream. Fuck," He pauses, shaking his head, pushing himself up onto one elbow as he runs a hand through his hair. "That was really weird. Go back to sleep."

Face rumpled in confusion, Chris picks himself up off of the pillow and squints over at Zach some more, asking, "Are you okay?" again.

"Yeah, yeah I am," Zach says, but he's totally lying and they both know it.

Frowning, Chris studies Zach's face for about one more second before he shuffles across the small distance separating them. He wraps one arm around Zach's waist, and turns so his face is rested against Zach's chest. 

He's all sweaty and giving off the panic-y vibes, but Chris buries himself into the logo of Zach's t-shirt anyways.

"You're a really bad liar," Chris says, turning his head to the side so he can breathe. After a second, Zach wraps his arms around Chris' torso, too, and rests his chin on Chris' head. "I had a dream when I was in Paris that you became a carnie. Then you tried to win the house in a sideways game of ring toss."

Still breathing a little heavier than normal, Zach runs his hand up and down Chris' back, and asks, "Wasn't that an episode of the Simpsons?"

"Yeah," Chris replies, like Zach should know this without having to confirm. He licks his lips, and pretends he doesn't have drool all over the side of his face from when he was asleep on his own pillow. "I won, though."

Laughing now, Zach looks at the ceiling and says, voice soft, "Good."


	67. the inventor of post-its

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pinto at a wedding (whose wedding is up to you :D thanks!)

Chris' wedding vice is smoking. It's totally his jam, he loves it, whether it's a vineyard or a church or a fancy yacht in the middle of the ocean. Without fail he picks up a pack before every wedding he attends, and by the end of the night, it's empty.

Alternatively, Zach's a wedding dancer. And god forbid he gets drunk, because then it's all Dee-lite and Spice Girls requests for the DJ. Like honestly if Chris has to dance to Groove is in the Heart one more time, he's going to have to start picking up two packs instead of one.

Tonight is the perfect storm for both of them. A Jersey couple Zach has known since high school are getting hosting their reception in an outdoor venue in upstate New York. Basically, it means that Chris doesn't have to chain smoke before getting dragged into another tableau, and Zach doesn't have to time his requests just right while he waits for Chris to finish another cigarette.

No, because tonight, they're next on the level. Chris is smoking and dancing, and it's a little awkward, with the cigarette in his hand, and he's getting winded a little faster than normal, but it's also totally fucking awesome because he feels like a mega boss.

Zach still requests Wannabe and Who Do You Think You Are (DJs all have a favorite Spice Girls song and Zach wants to make sure his bases are covered), but Chris also gets in a request for LEN, which is his personal jam.

They spend the twilight hour between speeches and dinner dancing on the floor, alongside all of Zach's strangely tanned friends and family from Jersey.

Chris even reenacts one half of the Romy and Michele dance, despite the fact that he's only had a couple beers and he does not have his own Romy nor Michele.

Next year, he thinks, and pictures Zach in baby blue.


	68. its a fact, kiss kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can I please have some Chris and Zachary first kiss? Surprise me with any scenario you want <3

The first time Chris kissed a girl, it was really awkward. Like, mach ten awkward, with the fumbling and the bright sun and Chris' bout of hormonal acne that lasted longer than middle school did.

He still remembers it to this day, because that's the kind of bad memory it was. Totally all consuming.

Three months into his first year at Berkeley, a guy kissed him for the first time. It was admittedly not as awkward as the girl in sixth grade had been, but Chris still hadn't been ready for it - he'd been mid sentence, actually - and was ultimately unprepared for anyone else's tongue to slay up against his bottom lip.

After that, there was a steady five or six years of uphill improvement. The mouths got less sloppy, the girls got hotter, and when he made out with a dude, it was ultimately accompanied by a blowjob too.

But when Zach kisses him for the first time, it feels like the ground has dropped out from beneath him. The proverbial hill he'd been climbing since kissing that first girl in sixth grade explodes, and sends him flying into a universe where all he can think about is Zach.

Zach's hands are new and strong on his face, Zach's mouth is soft and wet against his, and all of a sudden it's an all new ball game.

Without meaning to Chris has stumbled into a new arena where everything else will always - always - be compared to Zach, right now, in this first moment that is the beginning of everything.

"Zach," Chris manages to say, voice soft as they both take a step back, and that's where everything starts.


	69. side walk when she walks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunken kisses in the rain :)

"Oh my god I have to sit down," Zach slurs, one hand coming out as his body lurches to the left, the sole of his shoe skidding up against the curb of the concrete sidewalk.

A few steps behind him, Chris rubs a hand over his face, and blinks up at the twilight-y, wet sky as Zach lowers himself down onto the curb. He makes a noise that sounds like 'agh' and then bitches, "You're the one who wanted to walk, and now it's raining."

"A quick siesta," Is all Zach replies, head hanging down between his shoulders as he rubs his own face with both hands in an attempt to sober up. They probably should have hung up the tequila way earlier than they did.

A second later, Chris crashes down onto the sidewalk next to him.

"I'm getting drunker the further we walk," Chris confesses, resting his head against the curve of Zach's shoulder. Zach's skin feels hot from the liquor but damp and cool from the rain pouring down from the sky above.

Making a noise of agreeance, Zach turns his head to the side and tries to focus in on Chris' face. It takes a second - Chris can tell by the way Zach's gaze unfocuses and then focuses back in - but then Zach is smiling, a slow creeping grin that spreads across his face from one side to the other.

"I am so glad I moved back to LA," He says after a second.

Chris grins and leans in, meeting Zach halfway mouth to mouth. Before their lips even touch they're both opening their mouths, wet and drunk and tasting like liquor.

They sit on the curb like that, mouth to mouth and soaked with rainwater, until puddles form underneath their feet and the street lamps come on.

"These streets weren't the same without you," Chris says, afterwards, when they're both helping one another back up from the sidewalk.


	70. don't swallow the cap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Zach holds Chris who's crying his heart out while watching Maleficent. And Chris asks Zach for a true love's kiss.

"You're drunk."

Chris makes a face in Zach's general direction, and wipes one hand over his face. Which is pink, from the alcohol, and blotchy, from the tears.

"I'm not drunk," He says, clearly drunk. Hiccuping, he narrows his eyes at Zach and the way he's just sitting beside Chris on the couch, his body spread across the cushions. "You're drunk."

Laughing, Zach reaches one arm out and hooks Chris around the shoulders, pulling him over until he's leaned up against Zach's side.

"I am drunk. But not drunk enough to lose it over Angelina Jolie's costuming," Zach confides, before pressing his mouth up against the side of Chris' head.

Chris smells like the mixed drinks he had been downing earlier. He'd finished off the remnants of the twelve pack his sister had left - Zach told him it was a bad idea from the start, but Chris hadn't listened, and now he smells like sugar and Hawaiian punch flavoring.

For a gay man that had gotten out of his twenties largely unscathed, it isn't exactly a good look.

"Kiss me," Chris says, mostly into the front of Zach's chest.

Zach settles back into the couch, takes a sip of his drink - rum and coke, thank you - and looks back at the TV before answering, "I just did."

"On the face, Zach," Chris continues, pulling back to peer up at him with a pissed off look on his face. The fact that he's been crying over this movie makes him look fully ridiculous. "Like in the movie."

It takes Zach about a second to study Chris' face, the way Chris is scowling at him like Zach just insulted the Pine family heritage, before he gives in and moves, kissing Chris on the mouth.


	71. these two vampires met one night, don't you know it was love at first bite?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can you write vampire Pinto :)

"You need to promise me that you want this," Zach tells him, his voice hushed in the dark as he exhales his words against Chris' mouth.

The bedroom window is wide open, curtains flowing in the winter breeze as the air rushes in. Every time Zach speaks, he can see his breath, and almost watch as his words form and hang in the air.

"I want it," Chris replies, his voice just as quiet, like it's a secret that only Zach is meant to hear. He tilts his head back, chin angled up into the air, and exposes his neck.

Zach laughs, low and cool against the column of Chris' neck as he bows his head and reaches for Chris' wrist with his right hand.

"I'm not Dracula," Zach intones, leading Chris' hand through the bed sheets, until their fingers emerge from beneath the covers, intertwined.

Chris makes a face that is half "I'm sorry" and half "Well, I didn't know" as he looks up at Zach's expression, and lets Zach rotate his wrist, until the pale, thin skin over his veins is showing - almost white in the moonlight.

"I promise," Chris hushes out, eyes closing as Zach finally sinks his teeth into Chris' skin.


	72. everything i love is on the table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi! would you consider writing a pinto alpha/omega prompt fic?

Zach doesn't mean for it to happen.

He's always considered himself an intellectual; someone who acts with his mind long before he considers striking with his body. He was raised by his mother from a young age, he believes in fair rights for all and - intellectually speaking - he doesn't give much weight to the old "barefoot in the kitchen" trope.

That is, until he meets Chris.

If Zach's life up until Chris had been a movie, it would have been the black and white part of The Wizard of Oz. When Chris walks into his life, everything changes. Suddenly the universe around him is technicolor, and everything - everything - spirals back into Chris.

He can't help the way he acts around Chris. No matter how hard he tries to reel himself back in, the animal part of his brain takes over and he's grabbing, and kissing, and taking everything that Chris will give him.

Chris gives Zach whatever he wants; Chris' face is always open and relaxed, his eyes soft and warm when he looks at Zach, whether across the room or from a few inches away on a mattress.

When they're like this, in the dark of their bedroom, Zach's breathing heavy and damp against Chris' neck as he thrusts into him, Zach thinks about the person that he used to be. The studious, levelheaded student of the world who never thought too much about the more archaic side of things.

But then he looks at Chris - Chris' mouth, open, Chris' hands, holding onto Zach's forearms, Chris' chest, heaving - and he can't help but hold on, just a little tighter.


	73. come down, its alright, lead my arms the rest of the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris going as Zach's date to an awards show.

"If I have a stress related heart attack in the middle of all these people, please don't let them take pictures of my dead body," Chris says, joking but also kind of not, as their SUV pulls up to the curb.

Zach looks over at him, away from where he had been oogling the crowds growing outside of the limo line, and raises one eyebrow.

"You really think I'd pass up the opportunity to use you as a human shield?" Zach asks - his words the perfect deflection to Chris' anxiety fueled sort-of joke.

It makes Chris laugh, Zach's words probably made more humorous by the pocket sized bottle of vodka Chris had chugged in three gulps on the way here, but laughter was all Zach was going for so he considers it a win.

"Okay but no seriously what are we doing?" Chris asks, the pitch of his voice getting a little higher despite himself as they both watch through the window, as a suit-ed up gentleman walks towards their door. "This is a bad idea. We match. We look like the topper of a really fucking gay wedding cake."

Zach smiles at the assistant that opens the door, and looks over his shoulder as he reaches for Chris with one hand and answers, "We are a really fucking gay wedding cake. Come with me."

"Yeah, okay, hold on," Chris says, words rushed as he shuffles across the bench seat. He reaches for Zach's hand and grabs onto it like he's Chris' lifeline in the middle of a swirling ocean. "This is a good idea, right?"

Licking his lips, Zach pauses, looks Chris in the face, and replies, "For the Hollywood school of success, probably not. But for us, I think it's the best idea we've had in a really long time."

"Alright," Chris nods, his shoulders relaxing as he weighs Zach's words, and studies his face one more time. His gaze flickers past Zach's shoulder, out into the crowd outside, and then he says, "I'm ready."


	74. a great big pile of losers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inadvertently (which I actually spelled right the first time wow) coming out as a couple among their trek castmates?

"Every time you say that the chicken is a good idea, and every time - like, five for five, at this point - you come to realize that the chicken is a _bad_ idea," Zach is bitching, food services tray in his hands as he and Chris sit down at one of the makeshift cafeteria tables.

Chris is right behind him, still dressed like Kirk as he juggles his own tray, a plate of grilled chicken on one side, and an already opened can of diet coke on the other.

"I like chicken, Zach, I'm not going to stop eating chicken," Chris says, plunking his tray right down next to where Zach has set his down.

Across the table, both Zoe and Karl stare at them with curious, "maybe I don't actually want to know" eyes.

"Your mom was right," Zach tells him, aggressively ripping the plastic wrapper off of his equally plastic fork. "You know that story she always tells about how you didn't believe the oven was hot until you pressed your palm on the element? _That story was the beginning of the rest of your life._ You're like a darwin experiment that lasted way too long to live in the laboratory forever."

Chris frowns at him, looking sour, before his interest snags on one of the items of Zach's more ethnically assorted lunch tray. After a beat of silence, during which Zoe and Karl continue to stare, Chris asks, "Is that crab cake?"

"Yes," Zach answers, stabbing his fresh plastic fork into the small side salad he snagged from the veggie table. After a second, Zach eyes him and asks, "Do you want one?"

Even though he's already reaching for one, Chris nods and says, "Yeah, I didn't even notice them there."

"You need to break your chicken routine," Zach finally concludes, chewing on his salad. "I'm not cooking you poultry anymore."

After a second, they both look across the table, to where Zoe and Karl are still staring back at them. Zoe is full on gaping, although Karl doesn't look that surprised.

"Nice to know you went straight from the sexual tension to being married," Karl shrugs, before picking up his overstuffed panini with both hands.


	75. SMRT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: it's Scrabble night at the Pinto household! (sorry if this has been done before!)

"House rules, you're wrong," Zach announces, reaching across the board for his beer as he settles back at the table with his recently retrieved dictionary in hand. "If you don't like it, find someone who cares."

Frowning, Chris takes his letters back off of the board - okay so he had been trying to cheat, but he also totally thought he'd be able to get that one past Zach - and says, "Your nazi work ethic towards board games never fails to astound me."

"I'm not your mom, Chris, stop trying to make CABUHAZI a word," Zach shrugs. He watches as Chris lays an alternate word against the board, and then raises one eyebrow to continue, "CUB isn't the strongest play you've ever made, but at least it's within the confines of the english language."

Chris stands up to grab another beer and starts around the table, pausing behind Zach to tug his head backwards until it's upside down and he can press a kiss against his mouth.

"You're within the confines of the english language," Chris mutters against his mouth, before pushing Zach's head back up and heading towards the fridge.

A little disoriented from the kiss, Zach can't help himself from smirking as he reaches for his own tiles, fingers moving to arrange them into a new word.


	76. el scorcho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're still taking requests, I'd like to request pinto sharing a hotel room for the first time on the trek tour :3

"Let's pretend I'm your sexy call girl," Chris jokes, following Zach into the otherwise empty hotel room. "You can be the businessman that hired me on a whim while you were passing through Tokyo."

Laughing, Zach loosens the knot of his tie, and throws his cellphone and wallet down onto one of the empty beds before answering, "We can have sex in one of those bed cube things."

"What, the solitary confinement capsule?" Chris asks, his laugh echoing Zach's as he sits down on the bed opposite where Zach is now standing, unbuttoning his junket shirt. "Get our tantric on."

Sliding the tie out of his shirt collar, Zach grins and shakes his head before he replies, "You're ridiculous, as always."

"That's what they call me," Chris exhales, sounding proud of himself as he leans back on both elbows on the bed and eyes Zach. "Christopher 'Ridiculous' Pine."

Walking over to where Chris is reclining, Zach stands in between his knees, and looks down, one eyebrow raised, "I'm pretty sure there's a Whitelaw in there somewhere, too."

"Shh shh shh," Chris soothes, hooking one of his legs around the backs of Zach's knees. It makes Zach laugh and lurch forward, one hand coming out to steady himself against the edge of the bed as Chris adds, "Let's stop talking now."

Still grinning, Zach leans over Chris more, until both of his palms are sinking into the mattress and they're almost nose to nose.

"My little Japanese call girl," Zach intones, before kissing Chris on the face.


	77. berlin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt request: Chris did actually go to see Zach's play while he was on Broadway

He sits at the very back of the house, with his hat tugged down low on his head and his beard grown slightly longer than usual. To anyone else he looks like any other New Yorker, just another face on the street with a playbill folded in one hand.

It's no surprise but Zach is radiant. Chris stops breathing for entire monologues, feels fireworks burst in his chest when Zach steps out from the shadows, curls his fingers against his palm when Zach stares out into the house lights, a small, sad expression on his face.

Now that Chris isn't around so much, he doesn't get to see Zach when he's like this, when he's on top of the world. California and New York are only a plane ride away from one another, but sometimes they feel so much further apart than that.

When Chris watches Zach on stage, it's like watching someone that he saw once in a photograph. Zach's hair is styled differently than he remembers, his stage clothes are unfamiliar, and his voice is rough, different. Separate than the Zach that he remembers: the one he knew on both sides like the front and back of his own hand.

When the show is over Chris tucks his playbill into the front pocket of his jacket, and ducks out before the audience has had a chance to stand and applaud.

Instead of sticking around, Chris disappears back out into the busy street, the dark night and the endless city of possibilities.

He's got a lot of things that he has to do, now, but for tonight at least, Zach won't be a part of them.


	78. i know i know i know now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris is nervous about meeting Zach's mom for the first time

"You'll be fine," Zach promises, knocking Chris' hands away from where he's fidgeting with his own lapels. Stepping closer, Zach adjusts them himself, his thumbs sliding beneath the fabric. "She's got a thing for guys with blue eyes, so don't even worry about it."

Chris lets out a chest full of air, and says, voice strained, "Great, so as long as I just stare her down I should be fine."

"She's seen you on Skype, Chris, it's not like we're pregnant teenagers on the lam or something," Zach continues, before taking a step back to assess Chris' outfit. "You look great."

Still fidgeting, Chris makes a face that is half smile and half grimace, and then looks over Zach's shoulder, to where the hotel elevator dings and opens. A well to do looking couple walk out, though admittedly neither of them are Zach's doting mother.

"Hey wait a second, when did she see me on Skype?" Chris asks, Zach's earlier words finally clicking through his brain. He frowns at Zach as Zach stares back at him, looking way too amused for his own good.

Zach tries not to smile, and answers, "She got a new couch she wanted to show me. You were sleeping. She thought you were adorable."

"Jesus fucking christ," Chris intones, pressing one hand to his forehead.


	79. as long as we can dance around the room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chris watching zach sleep?

Growing up, Chris had a lot of ideas for how his life was going to go.

He was always the kid in high school who just kind of got by. His dad was famous, but not disgustingly so. He was cute, but not disarmingly so. He had his flaws, but they weren't bad enough to be bullied over. After graduation he assumed he'd find some typical mid-American office job, and marry a girl with pretty hair.

The apple pie life, kind of, updated for the twenty first century.

If Chris could go back to those crowded hallways and tell his adolescent shadow how things would actually turn out, he's not sure that he could pick the right words. 

When Chris thinks about it, when he takes back all of the steps he's every walked in his life - every moment that has ever lead him to here, this very second - he realizes that they all lead back to Zach. Every step he ever walked in the castle of his mind, they were all built so he would get here, to this moment.

Chris shifts, and tucks his both hands beneath his head. Zach is asleep on the pillow next to his, exhausted after getting in late on an overnight flight.

But he can't sleep, not yet. Not when Zach just walked back in the door. It's too gratifying to watch him like this, peaceful and relaxed, Chris' sheets and blanket tucked up around his chin.

Sometimes, when Chris is a million miles away from home and he closes his eyes, he swears he could live in moments like these forever.


	80. you're the one that i've kept closest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pinto, wearing each other's clothes.

"What's with the sleeves?" Katie asks, holding a pear in one hand and an apple in the other as she stares at Chris from across the fruit stand.

It's his most recent dirty little secret: he and his sister's weekly trips to the organic farmer's market. Honestly now that he's started growing his own vegetables, going to Trader Joes just feels like cheating.

"What? Why?" Chris asks, picking his arm up. It's just a normal sleeve, he thought, and he makes a face over at her as he tries to juggle a bundle of cherries into one of the paper bags.

She smirks at him and gestures to the way the cuff is hanging over the curve of his hand.

"What happened to tailoring every garment you own to within an inch of its life?" Katie asks, reaching for another pear. "Your sleeves are way too long. You're blushing. _You know exactly what I'm talking about, tell me more._ "

Chris - totally blushing, damnit - sticks his cherry bag into the bigger bag of fruit he's been carrying around.

"You're turning into mom," He answers her, before it takes one more moment to crack underneath her stare. He rolls his eyes under his sunglasses, and adds, "It's Zach's. His flight was last night."

She - goddamn her - makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like 'aw.'

"Do you want anymore apples?!" Chris asks, a little louder than he'd meant for it to come out, as he blushes more and reaches to take the pears out of her hands.

~

Across the country and freshly back to New York, Zach makes a face and pulls his t-shirt back down over his stomach.

"You need to start rocking a size larger," Corey tells him, grimacing and looking away as Zach reaches back up, trying to grab something off of the top shelf.

Not quite, Zach thinks, keeping his smile to himself.


	81. drown with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know it's vague, but Zach crying?

"He's a dick, man. Just forget about it," Neal tells him, sounding pretty sure of himself as he twists the cap off of another beer.

Beside him, on the couch, Zach licks his lips and presses one palm against his leg, the other curled around his own beer bottle.

"Don't call him a dick," Zach says, shaking his head. His voice is rough, used - he's too tired to care what Neal thinks about him today. "That's like a dime piece insult, and you liked him two days ago."

Neal drops down into the couch cushions next to Zach, and offers him a sideways look, one eyebrow raising. "Two days ago he wasn't a dick. Today, he's a dick."

"Dumping me doesn't make him a dick," Zach intones, and it makes his breath catch in his throat. Once he says it out loud, it's out there, and he can't take it back - it's real, and soon, everyone will know, even the people who aren't sitting beside him on the couch right now.

Frowning, Neal taps his beer bottle against Zach's, and says, "I call em like I see em."

~

Neal means well.

Zach knows he does; good intentions, and all that, pointing out all of Chris' flaws for Zach to examine underneath a microscope. But it doesn't help, it doesn't alleviate the hurt that Zach feels everywhere. 

The feeling of Chris leaving him is so all consuming that for the last few mornings, Zach hasn't even known where to start.

This morning, hungover and staring at himself in the mirror over Neal's bathroom sink, Zach wipes one eye, and then the other. They're both red because he's been crying - crying is like his full time job lately, between running the production company and trying not to think about Chris - and he doesn't know where to begin, now. Now that it's all ended.

"You got this," Zach tells himself, knowing he doesn't believe a word.


	82. all we have holding us back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't trust a hoe, never trust a hoe, don't trust me

Zach's got a lot of problems. They start with, but are not limited to: Joe being the only masculine influence in his life throughout his teenage years, keeping all of his worth in the amount of worldly information he can retain, and not being able to sleep all the way through a one night stand.

These problems are potentially all separate, but can also all be related back to one another. Zach's pretty sure his issues started back when Joe's first highschool girlfriend dumped him. Never trust a hoe, Joe had told him, his head hanging off the foot of his mattress as he shot a nerf basketball into the hoop over his bed.

Without realizing it, Zach had taken those words to heart.

Now, an entire lifetime and about a million years later, Zach sometimes feels like he's back in Joe's teenaged bedroom, with his comic posters on the wall and his secret Playboy magazine stashed underneath the box spring.

"I don't get your fucking damage," Chris is bitching at him, storming throughout the front half of Zach's house as he aggressively re-packs his own overnight bag. "I might be broken, but you are irreparable sometimes."

Zach stands to the side, one hand on his bedroom doorknob as he watches Chris pack, listens to him as he rants on and on about all of things Zach has ever done to wrong him.

When Chris slams the front door shut behind himself, Zach is shocked to realize that he feels anything at all.


	83. you're standing in the way of the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We might kiss when we are alone/When nobody's watching/We might take it home/We might make out when nobody's there/It's not that we're scared/It's just that it's delicate" damien rice - "delicate"

"I'm still drunk," Chris says, staggering through Zach's front door with Zach's hand on his back, his sides, hands sliding up beneath either side of his suit jacket. "I'm still drunk, Zach."

The hands disappear as Zach gets the front door closed, and then locked. Two strips of light slide across the far wall as the taxi pulls away from the curb outside; Chris' eyes focus and then unfocus as the light shifts, transfers, and then fades away.

"I know, me too, oh my god," Zach says, running a hand through his hair as Chris starts trying to get out of his own suit jacket, struggling with the arms as he moves his way to Zach's couch.

There's a moment of silence between them, as Chris struggles with his suit jacket and Zach stands there, in the middle of his living room, silently debating ordering pizza even though he knows they're both in the middle of no-carb diets.

"Is this how it's supposed to be now?" Chris asks him, finally throwing his suit jacket against the couch. He's drunk, not belligerently so, but enough to bring up all the shit he'd never say to Zach's face when they're sober.

Zach backtracks from thinking about pepperoni and mushrooms. He raises one eyebrow, and leans forward, trying to figure out what the hell just came out of Chris' mouth. When Chris doesn't immediately continue, Zach adds, "I'm too drunk to read between the lines."

"This shit," Chris shrugs, crossing his arms. "Pretending things aren't the way that they really, you know, I don't know - the way that they are."

Frowning, Zach steadies himself. He really wishes he could just be thinking about the pizza right now.

"Everybody loved us," He finally settles on saying.

Chris kicks his feet up on the coffee table, and shrugs, "It was just a reality check. We've been living in an alternate universe for the last year, where it's just you and me and nobody else."

"It is just me and you and nobody else," Zach says, but when he looks back, many years later, that was the moment where it started.


	84. come out come out to the sea my love and drown with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tell me I'm a bad man, kick me like a stray

The first fight they ever get into throws Zach off guard.

In his previous relationships, he'd always been the one who was right. He could argue his way into, or strong arm his way out of, absolutely anything at all. His poor college boyfriends hadn't stood a chance.

When he meets Chris, everything changes.

Chris challenges him on everything. The context of the word that he just said, the way he intoned his voice, the way that he described their dinner as being fat free. When Zach slips up, Chris is the one who notices.

It changes Zach's life in a big, big way.

When he and Chris get into their first blow out, knock out fight, complete with doors slamming and Chris frothing at the mouth, something inside of Zach changes. That - that piece - that had been sitting inside him forever, maybe since before he was ever born, shifts.

In that moment where Chris is staring back at him, furious, both hands wrapped around the edge of the counter, Zach feels it all rotate inside, until everything is rolling into place like the tumblers inside of a combination lock.

Chris says "so fuck _you_ " in the most aggressive, spit filled way that Zach has ever, ever been spoken to in, and it makes him laugh. Right there, in the kitchen, in the middle of a September day, he explodes with laughter and he can't stop it.

"I'm sorry," Zach tries to explain, minutes later that have been spent with Chris staring at him, fuming but still curious. Zach covers his face with his hands, and repeats, "I'm sorry," and then adds, "Fuck, you have changed me forever."

That throws a cog in Chris' gears. He fumbles, mouth closing, and then regards Zach, his eyes wide and startled as he realizes that Zach is no longer arguing with him.

"You don't get to say that," Chris frowns, trying to hedge back into the argument. But it doesn't work. Because in that moment, all that Zach can see is Chris, and all of the small, stupid inconsistencies that develop around the remainder of his day just don't matter anymore.


	85. one more time i need to be the one who takes you home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> //Won't you take my hand//Won't you be a little brave//Come a little closer to me//

"This is really important," Zach tells him, and his voice is so quiet over the sound of the crowd outside, but it sounds like a freight train rushing through Chris' head.

Swallowing, Chris looks at Zach's hand, extended out to him.

"I always told you that you were brave," Chris says, and to his benefit he sounds confident even through the uncertainty that shakes his voice. "But I didn't know how right I was until this moment."

A grin creeps its way across Zach's face and he raises his eyebrows, wiggling his fingers.

"You ready?" He asks, as Chris exhales a short breath through his nose and then reaches forward, accepting Zach's hand.

Outside, the crowd begins to grow antsy, ready to get on with the panel for what they think is going to be another installment to the Star Trek franchise.

"Let's redefine this shit," Chris says, which makes Zach laugh as they step out from behind the curtain.


	86. OUCH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May be lonelier now but I'm happy oh no honest / Ain't only alone but what would we talk about anyway / I'd never resort to kissing your photo

Zach copes in strange ways.

The first day, it's business as usual. It's easy to pretend that nothing has changed when barely any time has passed; he goes to the studio, he bikes home, he feeds the dogs, he turns the TV on.

It's when he goes to text Chris something funny that he gets that knock in his stomach the first time. Oh, a piece inside of him says, realizing. Oh, it's not like that anymore.

That part of your life is over.

It's a slippery slope, after that first day. He gets mad at himself for crying but sometimes he can't help it - it's exhausting, trying to stay mad all day, trying to hold a grudge so he doesn't have to feel the pink, bruising pain underneath.

He gets drunk and listens to pop music alone. He orders pizza for three days in a row - it's gluten free and covered with pesto, but it's still pizza and he's still ashamed that the delivery guy recognizes him when he looks like this.

The next phase is drinking, smoking, and exercising too much. And then there's just nothing, only the feeling of total acceptance as he says "fuck it" to his reflection one day, and decides that his life is better without Chris in it, anyways. It's easier to just be one person, no longer part of a team.

He and Chris don't even have anything in common, other than the thread that held them together that was twined with words and a vague, passing cynicism to all those around them. So fuck it. Fuck him, Zach didn't need that.

And once all of those feelings, all of those phases have passed, Zach just lays in bed alone, resigned, as he swipes through the photos on his iPhone that he just hasn't been able to delete yet.


	87. a weeping ball of emotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris and Zach watch The Notebook. Chris, of course, cries.

"Oh my god how are you not?!" Chris boggles, voice loud and pitchy as he leans forward on the couch, startling Skunk from his usual position on the floor beneath their feet.

On the other end of the couch, Zach kicks his socked feet against Chris' bare toes, and replies, "I told you, movies don't really make me cry. It's sad, but I know it's only a story."

" _That's what makes it so sad_ ," Chris continues, groaning as he leans back into the couch and wipes his palms against his eyes. "They died together, for christs sake, Zach. They died and she probably didn't even remember him."

Now laughing, Zach looks between Chris and the credits, which are slowly rolling across the screen.

"I would argue that she did remember him," Zach shrugs, rolling over onto his side, so he's stretched out along the length of Chris' legs. "There was a moment of clarity when they were both in the hospital bed. I thought it was sad, but ultimately very poignant."

Chris is still sniffling as he wipes his face again and frowns down at Zach, now reaching for the television remote as he rests his head against Chris' thigh.

"I want a new hospital bed partner," He says, watching as Zach smiles against the fabric of his sweatpants. "I need a bit of theatrics when I die. Maybe one tear."

Changing the channel, Zach keeps his eyes trained on the television screen as he replies, "Don't worry babe, when we go down, we'll go down together."

"That's what I'm talking about," Chris sighs, sniffling again.


	88. i'm coming out (feat. nicki minaj)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> song lyric: my anaconda don't want none if you ain't got buns hon

"Oh my god," Zach intones, covering his face with one hand as he drops his head down, hanging it in shame over his glass of booze. "I am so embarrassed for myself right now."

Beside him, Chris is dying laughing, one palm over his chest as he lurches forward again, continuing with his anecdote. He has a new audience in Zach's east coast social circle, and he is loving the warm reception.

"It's true!" Chris exclaims, pausing to suck hard on the straw of his drink. He's out, it's just ice cubes that are left, but that won't stop him trying. Around the table Zach's friends are cracking up, laughing hard as they cover their mouths and oogle Zach every time something new comes out of Chris' mouth. "You are an _ass dude_ , everyone here knows it. I'll get up, I'll turn around. There's your proof."

One of the guys they're drinking with cackles and adds, "That is _hard evidence_ he's got there, Zach, fuck."

"Thanks," Chris grins, clearly fucking drunk, as he sits there all red faced with excitement as Zach continues to try and drink through the embarrassment next to him.

After a second Zach finally cracks, a grin spreading across his face as he shrugs his shoulders and holds one hand up, trying to get the waiter's attention again.

"Whatever, like you aren't all jealous," He finally says, shooting Chris a glance out of the corner of his eye.

Everyone claps and laughs more, falling against the back of the booth they're all sharing as Chris pumps both arms up in the air.


	89. one less problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry if you did get this, my internet has been acting weird so I wasn't sure :$ I love your prompts and I was wondering if you're still doing them could I maybe get one of e/s chris and zach running into some of Zach's old high school bullies maybe, i just haven't been able to get it out of my head. Again sorry for the resend I love your blog!! <3

"I'm not saying anything, I just totally do not get your enthusiasm towards getting a receipt. Like, you have online banking, I know you do," Zach is saying, standing beside the table they had been sitting at as he loops his scarf around his neck, tucking the ends into the collar of his jacket.

Chris makes a face and shrugs, tucking the receipt for dinner into the bill fold of his wallet, "It's habit, man. You've seen my accounting box. I keep it on my desk."

"You mean the cardboard box you used to keep under your computer until you finally joined the twenty first century and upgraded to a laptop?" Zach asks, raising his eyebrows as he holds one arm out, waiting for Chris to make his way around the table as well.

Laughing, Chris shrugs and tucks his wallet back into his back pocket before stepping out from the booth, accepting Zach's hand as he follows Zach out into the aisle.

"Whatever, you're like the CNN of technology," Chris snickers, following after Zach as they start out of the restaurant, covertly hand in hand. "You're always a few days late and full of misinformation."

Zach's turning his head, likely to reply to Chris over his shoulder, when someone shouting Zach's name from across the restaurant distracts them both. Out of habit they both let go of one another's hands, as Zach turns to identify the voice.

"Oh my god," Zach intones, taking a step back and almost onto Chris' foot as two guys come over from where it looks like they had been seated at the bar.

One of Chris' hands comes out automatically, palm steadying Zach's side as the guys come up with huge grins on their faces, their hands extended in Zach's general direction.

"It's Cameron, remember me?" One of them asks, red in the face and maybe a little drunk as he gestures to the other guy behind him. "This is my buddy Carl."

Zach looks a little shaken, but he recovers and shakes Cameron's hand, and then reaches for Carl as well.

"I remember you," He says, letting go of Carl's hand. He half turns and gestures to Chris, saying, "This is Chris - Chris, Cameron and Carl."

Chris shakes their hands as well, passing on the alliteration joke when he picks up Zach's discomfort.

"Nice to meet you," He says, nodding, just as they both blurt 'Captain Kirk!'

Later that night, on the ride home with Zach behind the wheel and Chris sitting shotgun, Zach talks about every middle school encounter he had with Cameron. They started with, but were not limited to: mud puddles, pushing, and slamming lockers.

"You should have told me at the restaurant," Chris says, kind of joking but also kind of not as he adds, "That dude was big, but I'm scrappy. I could have taken him down."

Zach changes lanes and says, "Doesn't matter," but the old memories are still reflecting across Zach's eyes - Chris can almost see them from where he sits in the passenger seat.


	90. if i'm not the one then i'm the best you ever had

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Reunited for the first time in a long time after unfortunate filming schedules

Chris has always - always - had a hard on for the way that Zach throws him around, sometimes, usually after they've had a few drinks and had to keep their hands off of one another all night. Chris knows shit is about to get real when Zach starts throwing "baby" at him like it's candy from a float in a parade.

The only thing better than the nights where they can't touch one another are the weeks that they can't see each other between filming. There's something about the time, the distance and the space between them that makes Zach lose it, and Chris reaps it every single time, more than happy to spread himself out over the bed if it means that Zach will treat him like this.

"Say it one more time," Zach says, his mouth close to Chris' ear as he sinks in again, his hips rolling, moving against the curve of Chris' ass.

Chris groans, delighted, and leans his head back against the pillow, mouth dropping open as Zach stops moving, his body hovering over Chris', paused and waiting for Chris to say something in return.

"I missed you, I love you," Chris groans, repeating everything he thinks he remembers saying over the last few minutes.

The words unlock something in Zach as he starts to move again, breathing hard, his hands coming up to grab both of Chris' wrists and twist them up, pushing them into the down of the pillow beneath his head.


	91. spit in my mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so tonight in the wordplay as foreplay chatzy we were talking about that ontd comment. AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.

Chris is shaking.

He can’t help it. It’s a mixture of adrenaline and something else, something that he’s never felt before. He’s fucked people before; a lot of people, actually, the list of girls and guys that he’s shared some kind of penetrative state with is nothing to be scoffed at.

But tonight, with Zach, this is different.

His body trembles, his hands, his arms, like he’s riddled with excitement but there’s nowhere for it to go except for through his skin. He feels like he’s in sixth grade and about to make a presentation to his science class, he feels like he’s about to embark upon his first emotional scene, he feels like he’s about to walk into an audition that he knows will end up in a screen test.

But all of these alternate realities he creates, they’re not real. In reality, he’s in bed, with Zach, Zach’s hand wrapped around his wrists, pressing them against the pillow that Chris is laying on.

He’s used to Zach, controlled. Mr. Dictonary, I know every pop culture reference in the universe Zach. Mr. I can’t be one-upped, no matter how much you try.

Chris groans, and drops his head back against the pillow, because he doesn’t know what else to do. The feeling of Zach’s cock, rigid and hard against Chris’ torso, is driving him crazy, and he doesn’t know what else to do other than shiver.

“Look at me,” Zach tells him, squeezing his wrists, pressing his cock against Chris’ hips.

Chris groans again without meaning to and presses his hips up, back against Zach’s.

“No,” Chris says, because why wouldn’t he press this button.

There’s a pause and Chris can tell that Zach is weighing his options, amused and intrigued at the way that Chris is responding to him. After a second, Zach’s body weighs harder against Chris’ torso, his arms and legs and mouth hotter than Chris ever remembers them being.

Chris is laying there, pleased with himself one minute, and the next, he hears the sound of Zach spitting, and then there’s the feeling of warm liquid against his mouth.

He doesn’t know why, but it does something to him. The animalistic feeling of Zach claiming him, like that, like this, shoots right to Chris stomach.

“Fuck,” Chris groans, tilting back against the pillow, spit trailing from his chin to his bottom lip.

“You’re mine,” Zach tells him, growling almost, as he tightens his grips on Chris’ wrists and presses his own hips closer, flatter against Chris’ torso. “From right now, you are mine.”


	92. and even if it sounds crazy, darling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "If you're gonna be lonely, I wanna be lonely with you."

"Hey, man."

Zach looks up from where he's sitting on the curb, both knees angled up awkwardly into the air as he tries to block his paper catering plate from the wind. It's on the ground between his feet, loaded with rice and veggies.

Offering a crooked smile up into the sun shining over Chris' head, Zach brings up a hand to try and block the glare as Chris pulls a hoodie over his Starfleet regulation uniform.

"What's up?" Zach asks, raising one eyebrow, using his fork like it's a spoon as he brings his plate up to get at a mouth full of veg.

Chris shrugs, and hesitates for a minute, hands deep in his pockets, before he stoops down and then drops, letting one knee buckle down to the ground as he rolls to the side and sits on the concrete at Zach's hip.

"Can't shake a weird feeling today," He says honestly, squinting over at Zach's profile. Zach chews his food, swallows, and smiles, looking away from Chris and down to his plate as he half-assedly scrapes the edge of his fork against the paper.

Raising one eyebrow, he looks back over at Chris, and asks, voice soft, "At least we can be weird together, right?"

"Always," Chris grins, breaking out into a grin.


	93. storms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyric Prompt?? And even if it sounds crazy darling I won't let you go And even if it don't stop raining darling I won't let you go And even if the world's burning darling I won't let you go Even if it sounds crazy darling I won't let you go. Hedley

Chris has put up with a lot of shit in his life.

A crappy math tutor in eighth grade who would only explain concepts with food and pencil crayons as his props. The girlfriend in his graduating year who he's pretty sure used him only as a ticket into prom. His sister's unwavering ability to flawlessly get beneath his skin, even after all of these years.

More recently: an unforgiving career, and a publicist who was not out of a 1990s New York but instead from a very post-millennial California. Fuck that bitch, Chris would muse sometimes, usually when he was drunk. Fuck her and fuck her dumb ideas, and fuck everything about the last few fucking years of his stupid fucking life.

He'd had a conversation with her, once. He had also been a little drunk that day - he'd gone out for a birthday lunch with one of his best friends, which had included beers, and then he'd met his publicist for late lunch almost directly after, which had included mimosas and bottomless margs.

That conversation had not exactly gone swimmingly. He'd had worse conversations with women before it, and he assumed he'd have worse afterwards, but man. There was a lot of spitting and shit-talking on his end, and a lot of eye rolling and "you're my client" lines from hers.

She just didn't get Zach, and the place that Zach had in his life. Chris had tried to explain it, that afternoon, pointing a bamboo drink umbrella across the table at her as he explained all of the things that he would do to keep Zach in his life. They included, but were not limited to: walking on hot coals, rolling out of a moving car, and jumping into the shallow end of the pool.

"Write _that_ down," He'd snapped at her, frowning over the liquor on his fingers as she'd rattled off the next handful of events that he would be at. 

Halfway through their conversation Chris' phone had rung, lighting up against the table, that great big photo of Zach's stupid shiny face popping up on the screen of his iPhone. Exceptionally bright, he thought with a dumb smile on his face, and even though Zach always gave him so much shit for keeping his screen at 100% brightness, it was worth the low battery life just for moments like this.

There were a lot of things that Chris would do to keep being fortunate, to keep work on the table. But there would always be more things - anything - that he would do to keep Zach.


	94. i love that name, yeah, i see it everywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chris and Zach just lying in bed snuggling and talking on a rainy day?

"I don't know what the right word is, but I know it's not 'flabbergasted'," Chris says, mouth against the curve of Zach's bare shoulder. 

Honestly he's still half asleep - they were up late last night and he has no idea why Zach makes it a habit to wake up by 8 on the daily - but he's kind of a crossword puzzle connoisseur and he knows Zach knows better than this.

"Hey, pal," Zach intones, voice rough with sleep. He doesn't look away from the screen of the iPad as he types in the last 'D.' After that, he tilts his head back a little, just enough to look at Chris and say, "Go back to your celebrity word scramble, I got this."

The celebrity word scramble Zach is referencing is of course the one time that Chris partook in the game at the back of a US Weekly magazine. It had been a long flight, he'd found the tabloid already in Zach's car, and goddamnit, he'd enjoyed it. It had been the junk food of word games.

"Eeeeeeeehhhhhhhh!" Chris drones, making an annoying buzzing noise as Zach's app tells him he got the clue wrong. Zach looks pissed off as he turns back to the app, and Chris smiles, digging into Zach a little further. Chris rereads the clue again, and then tries, "Overwhelmed?"

Frowning, Zach replies, "Maybe," and slides his arm around Chris' shoulders, holding the iPad in the air awkwardly between them as he taps in the word 'overwhelmed.'

"From Eva Longoria to the New York Times," Zach laughs, as the app accepts the word and takes Zach to the next open spot.

Chris slides his arm across Zach's chest and settles into his side, yawning and nodding as Zach moves onto the next word.

"I got you," He says, letting his eyes close. An 8AM nap sounds awesome right now.


	95. yeah we can swing it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach likes Chris's glasses

"What, you like the sexy librarian thing?" Chris asks, raising one eyebrow as he bites the tip of his finger and lifts one leg up into the air. He's going for sultry, Zach assumes, but then he kind of loses his balance and tips into the side of the car.

Pulling the gas nozzle out of his car, Zach smiles and shakes his head as he sets it back at the pump.

"The nerd thing you've got going on right now is pretty hot," Zach shrugs, twisting the gas cap back on. Chris laughs and opens the passenger side door, a little awkwardly as he juggles their coffee and his copy of the newspaper, which Zach still doesn't get.

They've been dating for basically ever and it's the only habit that still boggles Zach. Newspapers are more expensive now then they were when they first met, and Chris still reads them like they're the fucking elder scrolls.

"Did you get me more gum?" Zach asks, as he gets back into the driver's seat. He hasn't even got the full sentence out before a pack of gum hits him in the chest and drops into his lap. "Thanks."

Chris sighs and buckles himself in, saying, "I know, I'm the best nerd girlfriend ever."

"I don't know about that," Zach grins, wishing he could pull Chris over for a kiss between their consoles. "But the glasses are definitely doing it for me."


	96. tko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so would it be completely weird to prompt a rentboy au?

"I was surprised to see you again," Chris says honestly, the sheets around his hips low as he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and exhales, blowing smoke up at the ceiling of their hotel room.

Beside him on the mattress, Zach arches one eyebrow at him, and then reaches for the cigarette, his fingers brushing Chris' as he does so.

"And why's that?" He asks, sounding curious despite himself.

Chris shrugs and licks his lip - swollen, now - before he replies, "You're not my usual repeat client, is all. You're wealthy, successful, incredibly smart and a little uncanny valley when it comes to how put together you are. My clients are usually twenty year old basement dwellers who haven't lost their virginity yet."

"You need to upgrade your clientele," Zach grins, blowing smoke right into Chris' face.

Smiling despite himself, Chris shoves Zach away by the shoulder before stealing the cigarette back, and laying against the headboard as he regards the ceiling fondly and takes another drag.

"I don't wanna do this forever," He says after a second, voice quiet. It's simple, but Zach understands. There's no reason to make a business more fulfilling when you don't want to get stuck in the rabbit hole for too long.

There's a heavy, hanging pause, before Zach clears his throat and looks Chris in the face. He says, "Don't, then. Work for me exclusively. Consider it a contract."

"Mutually beneficial," Chris laughs, sounding amused, but it isn't a flat out 'no,' and because of that, Zach keeps talking.


	97. damnit, babe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chris and zach writes poems about each other and whoever wins will have a one-time pass to request for something which the other will acquire on behalf of. okay but we all know neither of them would admit to lose in the mastery of language. so.

Chris makes a loud noise that sounds like a mix between 'augh' and 'ugh' over Zach's laughter and the remaining bar noise ambiance. Between them, there are a pile of crumpled up bar napkins and shot glasses.

"Two more tequila," Zach yells, his eyebrows arched high, eyes bright and lit up with happiness as he leans one elbow on the bar top and raises his hand in the '2' hand symbol towards the bartender.

The bartender nods and smirks a bit as he tosses his white bar towel over his shoulder, stooping down to grab another lime out of the cooler.

"When the fuck did you get so good at poetry?" Chris blurts, almost falling off of his bar stool as he crumples his latest losing napkin into a ball and throws it behind the bar. "I am so drunk. This is your fault. _Your fault._ "

Zach laughs, clearly entirely pleased with himself as he throws another twenty dollar bill down onto the bar top and crows, "You are drunk, and I _am_ good at this."

"What the fuck does cerulean even look like?" Chris asks, still sounding pissed off as the bartender comes back with their shots. When Chris sees the guy approaching, he points as Zach and says, "Don't get into a poetry battle with this guy. He's a fucking hustler."

Cackling, Zach grabs the two shots and slides one over to Chris. He hasn't been going shot for shot, but he'll down this one in solidarity simply because he is mopping the floor with Chris' ass.

"What are you writing poetry about?" The bartender asks, grinning as he picks the damp twenty up off of the bar. Without looking at what he's doing, he gets Zach's change from the tray under the bar top.

They both throw back the shots - Chris hesitating for a moment more than he had his previous two. Three. Yeah, definitely three, at this point, he thinks.

"Each other," Zach answers, making a face as he slides his shot glass back towards the bartender.

The bartender gives them a curious, amused look, and surmises, "That sounds pretty gay."

"Don't worry," Chris nods, wiping the tequila off of his mouth as he follows suit and slides his glass back, too. "It totally is."


	98. if my red eyes don't see you anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Arranged marriage AU?

"I didn't even realize people did this shit anymore," Chris grumbles, standing in front of the mirror as he adjusts his tie.

Behind him, his sister frowns, looking upset and distracted as she brushes a piece of lint off of the shoulder of his suit. She pauses, catches his eye in the mirror, and then whispers, "I'm sorry, Chris."

"It's not your fault," He sighs, looking down at his cuffs instead of meeting her sad eyes in the mirror. It's not her fault - not at all - just his parents, which shouldn't have surprised him, but there was always another first for everything.

There's the sound of movement behind them, before the door cracks open. Chris can't see who it is in the mirror - he can only see the stripe of light shine in - but he does hear the voice of the person who opened the door as they say, "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"You're not interrupting," Chris says, turning around.

His sister is still standing beside him, looking guilty and preoccupied with his suit as she brushes a hand over his shoulder again.

"I just wanted to introduce myself, you know. Before everything," Zach says, meeting Chris' eye for the first time.

And in that moment, everything - everything - in Chris' life changes.


	99. i got a twenty dollar bill that says no one's ever seen you without makeup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shiny shiny/ shiny boots of leather/whiplash girlchild in the dark

Chris' heart is beating for it, his knees pressed hard into the polished wood floor as he peels his palms off of the ground. His skin feels stuck to the gloss, tacky and slow as he pulls away, like he's swimming in the deep end of the pool.

Right is left and up is down and it's only because Zach is directly behind him, pressed closed, that Chris feels so disoriented, dreamy.

"Up," Zach says, soft, right against the shell of Chris' ear.

Without thinking Chris goes, righting himself, his back pressed flush to Zach's front as Zach's hands come around, sliding over his hips, his stomach, down to his cock.

It's pitch black in the room - they hadn't turned the lights on when they'd arrived back to Zach's place - and Chris is reminded of swimming in open water as he eyes the slight outline of things that are otherwise familiar. The line of Zach's arm is lit up by the moonlight coming in from outside. Chris recognizes his own hands, but only in the same way that he sees Zach.

"Bed," Zach says, next, in that same quiet way against Chris' ear. Chris groans and leans back against Zach as Zach leads them forward, the soles of his shoes sticky against the same polished floor Chris was pressed against earlier.

Chris' fingers curl against the bare skin of Zach's arms wrapped around him, and he grins slow, almost hidden in the dark.


	100. perfectly perfect together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lyric prompt: if you'll be my star, i'll be your sky, you can hide underneath me and come out at night, when i turn jet black and you show off your light, i live to let you shine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my 100th prompt! woo!!

Everyone at the table cracks up laughing, and Zach grins, trying to hide his smile as he bows his head and reaches for his napkin.

"Dude, you gotta tell the one when we were in - fuck, where were we? Amsterdam, I think?" Joe says, accidentally clinking his fork against the edge of his plate as he lurches forward to get Chris' attention.

Just the memory that Joe has prompted makes Chris laugh - he crumples with it, the skin around his eyes crinkling as his shoulders slump forward, bouncing as he giggles.

"Oh my god, Joe, mom doesn't want to hear that," Zach intones - the only contribution he's really made to the conversation since the extended family Quinto showed up - even though he can't help himself from smiling as he reaches for his wine glass.

Chris, beside him, clears his throat, trying to stop laughing as he waves one hand and shakes his head, gesturing to Zach's mom.

"You're gonna love this, Margo," He promises, taking a sip of water before he wipes his mouth off and rests his elbow against the edge of the table, pointing one finger back over to Joe. "Doesn't make you look great, though, buddy."

Grinning, Joe shrugs and says, "In the name of comedy, man."

"Alright," Chris laughs, before launching into the story of the last time they had all been in Europe. It involved a train ride, misunderstandings, and a box of weed brownies.

Zach laughs despite his hesitation, and lets his gaze linger between his mom and Chris, who shines so incredibly bright that he lights up the entire room.


	101. the only broken hearted loser you'll ever need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics prompt: I guess it’s luck, but it’s the same / Hard luck, you’ve been trying to tame / Maybe it’s love, but it’s like you said / "Love is like a role that we play." (Dashboard Confessional, Ghost of a Good Thing)

"It's not a fucking chore to love somebody, Zach," Chris snaps at him, picking his razor up off of the bathroom counter, followed by his toothbrush and contact cleaner.

In the other room, Zach is packing his own overnight bag, standing at the foot of the bed as he folds up his t-shirts and underwear.

"I never said it was a chore," He says, sounding much calmer than Chris feels. Chris makes a face at himself in the mirror and then zips his toiletries bag shut with a jerk before storming out of the attached bathroom. He slams the light switch off on his way out, lest Zach start in on him about saving the environment one light bulb at a time.

Zach looks up from zipping his suitcase up as Chris throws his bag down against the mattress. It bounces across the hotel duvet a few times and lands carefully against the edge of Zach's belongings.

"The whole calm and collected thing doesn't work on me, man," Chris says, resting his hands on his hips. He licks his bottom lip - nervous twitch, bad habit, whatever you want to call it - and raises his eyebrows in Zach's direction. He hopes he looks judgey. "And I don't need a reason to love you the way I do."

That makes Zach falter, physically. He opens his mouth to say something but then stops, dropping his head instead as he picks a garment out of his bag and haphazardly folds it for the second time.

"I didn't say you needed a reason," Zach says finally, looking up. He raises his eyebrows back at Chris, until Chris' face relaxes and he just frowns at Zach instead. "I said you didn't need to make this into something it's not."

Chris shakes his head and replies, "Whatever, Zach. We're not going to play games here, okay? I love you, and if you don't love me too, that's fine, but I'm not going to pretend that I don't."

"Okay," Zach replies, his eyes flickering back and forth over Chris' face, like he's trying to find something out of place. After another second of quiet, soft hesitation, he repeats, "Okay."


	102. dick bigger than a tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In light of recent, uh, events. Esthetician!Zach AU, waxing the Pine goods.

_totally freaking out,_ Chris texts, awkwardly holding his phone in the air as he lays on the bed, waiting for the esthetician to come back into the room. Chris feels like this position is giving him triple-double chins but there's no other way to rant about this. _my usual ball girl called in sick - currently waiting to get my nuts waxed by someone who i'm pretty sure i've previously seen in a porno._

He knows Karl won't text him back by the time this event will likely take place, but it makes Chris feel better to vent a little.

Steadying his phone against the middle of his chest, Chris clears his throat and drops his arms down to curl his fingers into the waxing table. He looks at the ceiling. He closes his eyes and tries to think of England.

 _Anaconda_ starts playing over the sound system as the esthetician comes back into the room; Chris squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again. Half of his brain is singing along to the familiar lyrics (they totally played this song at his spin class the other day), and the other half of his brain is chanting _don't get a boner don't get a boner don't get a boner..._

"You've been here before, right?" The esthetician says, stepping up beside the table. Chris nods quickly and awkwardly, raising a stiff hand up when the esthetician extends his own hand to shake. "Awesome. My name's Zach, by the way. I'll try to be quick, I know you were waiting around for a while."

Clearing his throat again, Chris makes a noise and says, "Not a big deal."

Somewhere, in the back of his head, the crazy part of his brain is reciting _he love this fat ass, this one is for my bitches with a fat ass in the fucking club..._

"You okay?" Zach asks, laughing a little as he steps away to pull on a pair of gloves. Chris raises one eyebrow and moves his head awkwardly against the little pillow. "You stopped breathing for a second there."

Licking his lips, Chris looks back at the ceiling, and manages to say, "Just thinking about Nicki Minaj."

Zach gives him a slanted look, and Chris laughs awkwardly, heart rate running a million miles an hour.


	103. shotgun shuts his cakehole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> huddling for warmth!

"This is the worst thing ever," Chris says, teeth chattering as he ineffectually waves his arm over his head one more time and takes another step into the shoulder of the highway.

Over by the car, Zach rubs his hands together and then reaches up, closing the hood of the car. _Lets go to your mom's for Christmas, Zach, lets roadtrip, Zach, cause I'll be shooting in Chicago, Zach..._

"Yeah, it's not the greatest night ever," Zach agrees, watching Chris trying to flag down cars that don't currently exist. The last time Zach saw someone else on this road, it was a semi truck driver in a big rig about five minutes after they initially pulled to the side. "I don't know what's wrong, we're going to have to call AAA."

Frowning, Chris turns and walks back towards Zach is standing. They're both only wearing light jackets, jeans, boots and gloves. Chris hadn't anticipated needing anything more between their last hotel stop and Zach's mom's front stoop.

"They take forever to get anywhere," Chris says, his voice sounding suspiciously like a whine. Zach arches one eyebrow in Chris' direction and then pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, nodding back to the car.

He starts dialing with one hand, as he waves Chris forward with the other.

"We should sit in the car, we'll freeze out here," He says, bringing the phone to his ear.

Chris starts around to his side of the car. He'd emerged about twenty minutes ago, with big aspirations of flagging down some kind of person who could help them. If Zach couldn't figure it out Chris didn't really know if that person existed, but it had seemed like a solid plan at the time.

He gets back into the car and watches Zach through the window, teeth still chattering as he crosses his arms and digs his ass down into the seats. Leather also seemed like a better idea when it was a free upgrade at the counter.

"The guy said at least an hour," Zach grumbles, swinging the driver's side door open and dropping down inside. He turns the ignition on, closes the door, and waits for the fuel gauge to display. "Fuck, and we barely have any gas left."

Chris frowns and says, "I'm freezing, Zach."

"I know," Zach sighs, scrubbing one gloved hand over his face before he pulls himself together long enough to extend one arm along the back of Chris' seat. "Come over here, you'll be warmer if we sit together."

Looking dubious, Chris replies, "I don't think I'm gonna fit."

"Fixed," Zach intones, maintaining eye contact as he rolls the seat all the way back and then lays it flat, shuffling his own body up a little bit so there's plenty of room between Zach's body and the steering wheel.

Chris considers it, and then shivers. Yeah, whatever, he thinks, promptly getting up off of the seat. He maneuvers himself over the center console and not so carefully drops himself into Zach's lap, grinning despite the crummy situation when Zach makes a noise.

"You seriously weigh three hundred pounds," Zach breathes, but Chris feels his arms creep around his waist, fingers sliding beneath the layers as they try and press their bodies together.

Wrapping one arm around Zach's shoulders, Chris tilts himself to the side a bit, going full fireman. He looks at Zach's nose from way up close and then says, "You love it."

"Are you warmer?" Zach asks, scrubbing his hand over Chris' shoulder as he tugs him a little closer.

Chris nods and closes his eyes, pressing his cheek into the side of Zach's neck. It's not the most happy his body has been, temperature wise, but he's glad that Zach is here. As a general rule he does better in California until Zach is in New York.

"I'm glad you're here," Chris says, softly, pressing his fingers into the bare skin he's found between Zach's coat and collar.

Zach doesn't answer, but he tightens his grip around Chris' body, and that's good enough.


	104. flightless bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts AU, please?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MTV True Life: I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books or seen any of the films (not including like the first half of the first one) so I don't know much about the universe BUT I never delete a prompt!

MTV True Life: I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books or seen any of the films (not including like the first half of the first one) so I don't know much about the universe BUT I never delete a prompt!

"You're really smart," Chris says, kind of without meaning to, and he guesses he didn't really realize it was sort of a rude thing to say until Zach's head pops up, eyes comically wide behind his glasses. "I uh, I didn't mean it like that. You're just - you know. You remember everything, and I, I - I never remember anything."

Shrugging, Zach flips the page of his spells book, and glances up at Chris again, like he isn't sure Chris will still be there.

"It's not hard, you just have to concentrate," Zach tells him, before he pauses and then adds, "Add attend classes."

Chris frowns and rests his chin on his hands, which are both folded over one another on the opposite side of the table from Zach's spell book.

"I attend classes," He says, defending himself as he studies the leather edge of Zach's book. It looks old, and passed down, like many hands have worked over its pages in the past. Chris' family bought him a brand new copy of his text the last time they had been in Diagon Alley. "I don't really want to be a wizard."

Twisting his book around, Zach pushes it across the table, and then taps on one particular incantation. Chris has no idea what any of it means.

"Everybody wants to be a wizard. It's magic, Chris, not rocket science," He says, reaching for his wand. Chris arches his eyebrows, and watches Zach's face as he continues, "You just have to have patience. Let's do this one from the beginning."

A little surprised, Chris sits up properly, and asks, "Are you helping me?"

"What does it look like?" Zach asks, smiling. He nods to Chris' wand, laying discarded by his elbow at the end of the table. "So - like I said, let's start from the beginning."


	105. all i want is nothing more to hear you knocking at my door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only you, beautiful. Or I don't want anyone. If I can choose it's only you.

Zach lists the house for sale, and it hurts.

The papers get signed, the photographs get taken, and the majority of Zach's personal belongings either get shipped to New York, or moved to the storage shed in the back of Neal's yard. Zach lets it all happen - he wanted for it to happen - with a vague sense of discomfort, the feeling of homesickness that begins in the bus on the way to summer camp.

He knows that an era in his life has ended, and he is officially closing the door by walking away from Silverlake. When he hands the front door key over to the real estate agent, he considers his roots officially severed.

What he doesn't expect, is for Chris to have an even bigger problem with it than Zach did.

"What are you doing here?" Zach boggles, taking a step back into the foyer without thinking about it. He's been renting out a one bedroom in Los Feliz for the last two weeks the house has been on the market; he's hoping it sells before he has to sublet for another month or two.

Chris is standing in the doorway, looking unmistakeably disheveled. With a vague sense of horror, Zach realizes Chris is wearing a tank top that is dangerously see through and bro-ish.

"You can't do it," Chris says, just as Zach blurts, "Your nipple is out, oh my god."

Licking his lips, Chris takes a step further into Zach's rental, and cuts him off by saying, "Forget about my nipple - you're selling your house?!"

"It's financially draining," Zach shrugs, looking anywhere but into Chris' eyes. What he doesn't say is _every time I set foot through that door all that I could see was you._

Chris shakes his head, and replies, "No, no way. I'll buy it."

"You're not buying my house," Zach sighs, frowning, and then pinching the bridge of his nose. This is totally why they haven't really spoken since they broke up.

Things are just so complicated, now.

"This is fucking America, Zach, I'll buy whatever I want," Chris blurts, and it's only a second before they both realize how completely fucking nuts Chris sounds.

Without meaning to they both smile and sigh, Zach crossing his arms over his chest as Chris leans against the door frame, exhausted.

"I just, I miss you a lot," Chris says, softly. "I don't know."

Zach knows. Zach knows exactly how Chris feels - Chris is all that Zach really ever wants, anymore, and seeing him here, standing in the doorway like it's just another day where he's wearing another stupid outfit, is sending mixed signals to Zach's brain.

"I'm selling the house," Zach manages to reinterate after a second. When Chris opens his mouth to reply, Zach cuts him off - opens the door a little wider, and adds, "But in the meantime, let's talk."


	106. all i see is you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heyy! Love your ficlets, every one is like a tiny dessert that brightens my day! :) Please, could I have ill Chris and caring Zach? Thank you!

"Oh gy gob," Chris breathes, or tries to anyway, as he sits on the couch gasping and wiping at his face with a kleenex. Before him, the television continues to play the _My 800 Pound Life_ marathon that he's been watching on TLC all morning.

As he's reaching for the glass of water he's been diligently working through for the last hour, Zach comes back in the front door, a plastic bag hanging from one hand, and a twelve pack of ginger ale under his other arm.

"How are you feeling?" He asks, kicking off his shoes before he's even got the door closed.

Chris shrugs, and leans back against the couch cushions before he answers, wiping the curve of his hand against his nose, "Like shid, man."

"I got you a bunch of stuff, uh, the pharmacist gave me these," He starts, pausing at the end of the couch to set the ginger ale down on the floor and dig around in the bag instead. A pack of cough drops hits Chris in the chest, before dropping into the blanket across his lap. "He said they should make your throat feel better. And then I got some actual flu medication because your mother is crazy, and nose spray will not fix all of your problems."

To illustrate Zach's point, Chris tries to inhale through his nose, and instead starts coughing when his airway is immediately cut off with congestion.

"Danhk youd," Chris manages, before cutting himself off with a sneeze.

Zach makes an 'ugh, Chris' noise before coming around the side of the couch, and sitting on the cushion beside Chris as he starts cracking open the flu medication.

"Is this the one where she hides a bottle of iced tea behind her mattress?" Zach asks, getting a little side-tracked despite himself as his attention wanders away from trying to pry the medication open to where there's an 800 pound woman being wheeled across the tv screen.

Nodding, Chris wipes his nose with a kleenex, and then drops his head back against the cushions, replying, "Width alld the daughders, yeah."

"Okay," Zach continues, popping two pills out. One immediately goes rogue, and disappears into the cushion crack between them. "Shit. You got that one?"

Chris may not be able to do much right now, but he can certainly feel a candy and or pill out of the sofa. Nodding, he reaches for the other pill Zach is still holding, and throws them both back dry.

When Chris swallows successfully, he immediately starts laughing at the screwed up expression Zach is giving him. He's grossed out, yet intrigued.

"Dahnks," Chris says, again, as Zach tosses the medication package onto the coffee table, and reaches for Chris' hand instead. It's full of germs and probably gross, but it's as close as Zach is gonna get to kissing him right now.


	107. xo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics::You could have my favourite face/And favourite name/I know someone who could play the part/But it wouldn’t be the same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came out way more round-a-bout then I meant for it to!

"You guys are like Mr. and Mr. Popular Baby Name 1984," Joe's new girlfriend tells Zach, laughing over her margarita as she stirs the mix around with her tropical colored straw.

Across from her Zach laughs, buzzed enough to be intrigued by the statement as he leans forward, raising his eyebrows at her from above the precipice of their communal nachos and individual drinks.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Joe blurts, ever the gentleman, as he opens his mouth comedically wide to lever a nacho covered with cheese and jalapenos in.

That makes Zach laugh even more - 80% of a Quinto's funny bone is compromised by direct, vaguely insulting lines of questioning - as he leans one elbow against the table and studies her a little further.

She's totally giggling now, trying to cover her mouth with one hand as she gestures between Zach and Chris with the other, clearly at a loss for words now that her initial thought is out in the ether.

"I think she's saying we're kind of the male equivalent to girls who are named Jessica and Ashley," Chris supplies, one eyebrow arched a little as he raises a hand in a 'maybe? right?' gesture over at her.

Nodding, she gestures back at Chris and adds, "Exactly. Like, you're obviously made for each other or whatever, it's just hilarious because your names are so..."

"Mr. and Mr. Popular Baby Name 1984?" Joe supplies, with that same sarcastic lilt to his voice.

It busts Zach into giggles again, which makes Chris smile, even though he does assure her, "I know where you were going with that - I get it."


	108. i got a monster in my closet, someone underneath my bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> halloween party au! one is wearing a mask, the other is not, they kiss but don't exchange info so the unmasked tries looking for masked. may or may not find him :D

i got a monster in my closet, someone underneath my bed

"I swear to god he was like the hottest guy I've ever seen," Zach says, sounding half disappointed and half proud of himself as he leans forward, picking another piece of cantaloupe off of the tray.

Across from table, Zoe angles an eyebrow at him over the rim of her mimosa, and then rolls her eyes.

"Every guy is the hottest guy you've ever seen," She says, which isn't exactly untrue - but Zach doesn't feel like that's a totally fair thing for her to say. He just has a type, and that type usually has blue eyes, a great mouth, and a gigantic ass.

Leaning back against the chair, Zach studies the side of his melon slice, and then replies, "No, like - this was _the_ guy. And I didn't even get to see his whole face."

"Maybe that's why you like him so much," Zoe cracks, narrowly dodging the napkin that Zach throws across the table at her in retaliation.

~

For real, though, that dude was seriously the hottest guy Zach had seen around in a while - including the recent harem of male models that he'd picked his way through.

Zach dreams about it, wakes up with a boner and lays in bed in the dark, jerking off beneath the sheets. For the next few days Zach double takes every semi-sort-of-looks-like-him-type guy he sees, and almost drops a carton of milk in the dairy aisle at the grocery store when a blond with blue eyes and a grocery store apron walks by.

It's getting to the point that Zach seriously considers investing in some kind of voodoo guru. Halfway through November Zach returns to the club, to the scene of the crime like Prince Charming looking for the glass slipper. Nothing turns up.

Suffice to say, Zach is shocked to bump into the guy - _his_ guy - a month later, when he's shopping for Christmas presents at Target.

He's wearing a red vest, but it's him - it's the guy - and he realizes that it's Zach, too. The guy fumbles and drops the sheets he had been restocking, and Zach almost walks into an end cap.

"Are you - " Zach starts, just as the guy nods and gulps and replies, "Yeah."

Taking a moment, Zach nods, mouth still half open, and then continues, "Do you want to?..."

"Yeah," The guy grins, extending one hand.

Zach has the presence of mind to glance at the guy's name tag.

 _Chris_ , it says, in a way that Zach can't miss.


	109. hell house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach and Chris watching a cheesy horror movie together. cuddling ensues.

"I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy!" Chris recites in a deep, dramatic voice, as he drops the disc into the dvd player, and then turns to gesture at Zach. He flaps one hand in the not-so-universal sign for 'you have the remote, play the disc' and then tosses the dvd case back onto the shelf.

Zach kicks one foot up onto the coffee table, and raises his eyebrow at Chris as he reaches for the tv remote and says, "You do not want to get into a classic horror movie line-off with me. I'm not even joking."

"I'll out-line you any day, buddy," Chris grins, falling into the couch cushion beside where Zach is sitting. He leans in close, and adds, "No tears, please, it's a waste of good suffering."

There's a moment that passes between them - that electric charge that follows them around like their shadows, especially when they're nose to nose like this. 

"Hellraiser," Zach answers, grinning when Chris laughs and steals the remote away from him, so he can take over dvd menu navigation duties. It takes about a second for Zach to recall a good line, and then he replies, sliding one arm around Chris' shoulders, "Meat's meat, and a guy's gotta eat."

Chris laughs again and hits 'play' on the movie proper before giving into Zach's weight. He lays down along the length of Zach's body, and counters, "That was a great reference, man, you get extra points for that. Motel Hell."

"Ding ding ding," Zach intones, sliding his hand over Chris' shoulders as Chris settles into him, into the V of his legs. "What movie are we watching again?"

Nodding at the TV screen, Chris replies, "Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy."

"Of course," Zach answers, stretching his legs out and watching as the familiar title card rolls on the screen. He coasts one hand through Chris' hair, and adds, "Baseball bats and boogeymen."


	110. beauty and the beast, obviously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fairy tale au

Tonight, the ballroom seems like it goes on forever.

It's always been otherworldly - huge and opulent, decorated with gold and royal blue, an antique dining table, dark matching chairs - but right now, it feels different to Chris. It feels too big and too small at the same time, perfect yet unable to house the feelings that are exploding in his chest.

He's never - he's never danced like this before. In the town square and over the sound of the local bar band, maybe, but never like this - the way that Zach sweeps him around the room, his posture unusually proper, his eyes familiar and warm.

Chris grins up at Zach's face and tightens his grip, fingers looping into the fabric at Zach's sides as they spin around the empty ballroom.

This is all so perfect, that Chris never wants it to end. For the first moment since he arrived here, Chris sees his future clearly. And in this moment, he realizes that it has everything to do with Zach.


	111. lightning strikes twice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU where they dress as Kirk and Spock at a Halloween party. (Love all your stuff by the way)

"You two are so fucking gay," Karl tells them, sounding judge-y yet loving as he pours himself another drink at the crowded kitchen counter.

Chris grins brightly, cheek to cheek as he sets his own twelve pack of beer down on the counter top beside where Karl's rum and coke sits. Behind him Zach edges closer, sidetracked with something happening behind them as he rests one hand at Chris' hip, but turns the majority of his attention behind them.

"You love it, buddy," Chris answers, and then flexes a little bit, because this yellow shirt is really showing off his delts. At Karl's resulting frown, Chris adds, "Your jealousy is palpable. Don't worry, next year we can do a group costume."

All of a sudden Zach is at Chris' elbow, attention on Karl as he raises his eyebrows and asks, "Who's doing a group costume?"

"Me, you and Karl. Maybe others," Chris nods, snagging two beers out of the box. He hands one bottle over to Zach, and then cracks the next for himself, sipping the head off before he adds, "Karl, buddy, you can have first dibs if you want."

Karl sips his drink and replies, "I want no dibs. Is that your real hair?"

"Yes, and yes, I'm shaving it all off tomorrow," Zach nods, touching his bangs self consciously.

Beside him, Chris grins and reaches over with his free hand, smoothing his fingers down over the glossy fringe that is perfectly cut across Zach's forehead.

"Keep it for a few days," Chris says, making Zach grin a little wickedly.

Karl makes a sour face and replies, "Oh my god, _don't_."


	112. stripped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi! If you're still taking prompts, could you please write something with protective!Zach? Somebody being mean to Chris when he's having a rough day so he doesn't fight back, just flinches, and Z steps in. If there could be some cuddling too, it'd be grand. Thank you so much!

Chris' deepest, darkest secrets are as follows:

a) He has a deep, abiding love for Christina Aguilera's entire discography - mostly Stripped, but including Bionic - even though he is vocally more of a Britney guy.

b) He usually has his Christmas shopping done by August at the latest (everyone thinks that Zach is the more put together one out of the two of them, but everyone doesn't know how Zach usually spends December 23rd wandering the floors of Bloomingdales like Chris does.)

and

c) After kissing Zach for the first time, Chris had mentally ranked it in his three worst kisses of all time. Zach's initial company included: the girl Chris kissed in the broom closet at a grade school party, and the accidental tongue slay he'd shared with a guy who later denied the whole thing. Zach ranked below the guy, but above the girl.

These are three things that Chris will take with him to his grave. Also, his photo roll full of selfies and pictures of his garden.


	113. ft. jason derulo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talk dirty to me

"I feel like someone can hear me," Chris hisses. When he woke up this morning, he never would have expected his night would have ended like this: namely, half hard and laying in a hotel bed.

On the other end of the line, halfway across the world, Zach laughs and barely registers Chris' panic. He replies, "Babe, nobody is checking for you. Like, what. You really think someone's going to eavesdrop on you?"

"You don't know Anna like I do," Chris sighs, still halfheartedly running his palm up and down his cock. Saying Anna's name out loud with his hand on his dick sends all kinds of incestuous feelings down Chris' spine and he cringes, shaking his head. "Say something to me, instead."

There's a bit of a shuffle, like Zach is getting himself situated a little further down in the bed, heels dug in, before he answers, "Alright, well if I were there right now I would be fucking you hard enough that everyone would hear exactly what was going on, eavesdropping or not."

"Jesus," Chris blurts. Despite himself, he gets a little harder at the visual - Zach strolling in and absolutely plowing him in the middle of a hotel while his entire ensemble cast unknowingly slept on the other side of the wall.

If Zach showed up right now everyone would know exactly what he was rolling up to do - it wasn't like Trek. For some reason the idea of everyone knowing Zach was theoretically there to bang him ten ways from Sunday makes Chris even crazier.

"Alright now I wish you were here to fuck me," Chris says, voice sounding a little strangled despite himself as he gives himself a good, hard pump.

Zach's answering laugh echoes down the line, softly.


	114. tell me i'm your national anthem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm standing over your body, hold you like a python, and you can't keep your hands off me or your pants on, see what you've done to me.

When he has Zach like this, he knows he's won.

Zach is a lot of things: tall, dark, mysterious. Outwardly intelligent; sometimes disgustingly, obnoxiously so. Put together, sometimes purposely disheveled. Everything that Zach does, the world thinks Zach does on purpose.

Which is... not always true.

Chris has been a lot of things to a lot of different people, but he was never somebody's kryptonite - until he met Zach.

He unravels Zach. He absolutely floors him, Chris can see it in the color of his eyes and the way that he lets his mouth drop open when he watches Chris move in front of him, on top of him, around him. When Zach touches him, sometimes his hands shake. When Chris gets too close, Zach smiles like he's been hit over the head, he begins to sweat.

Tonight, Chris leans in close, presses their bodies together. He feels Zach's palms on the lowest part of his back.

This is it; this is absolutely everything to them.


	115. cruz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And all I've got is you. It's nothing but the truth. All I've got is you.

Nothing overly remarkable had ever happened to Chris.

He had a pretty typical childhood: lovely parents, one sister, no family pets, frequent family vacations. Nothing crazy happened in college: he grew his hair out, told his mom he was gay, and got his first head shot taken. None of those three things had gone particularly well.

His career has been pretty similar right from the beginning: consistent, but nothing outrageously notable. Captain Kirk quickly transformed him into Captain Franchise, which had translated into a lush bank account but nothing too complicated, filmography wise.

Everything pretty much just ticked along until the day he'd met Zach. 

Zach had been the one to change everything, to challenge him. The first time Zoe had accidentally walked into one of their fights, she had legitimately thought the first picture might not make it out of production. A few days later, she'd caught them fucking in uniform in a trailer that was not a conspicuous as Zach had managed to convince Chris it was.

Their initial fiery chemistry had faded over the years, but it had been replaced with something different, stronger. Something underneath Chris' skin had grown to include Zach in him - Zach had moved from living in his heart to living in him always, no matter what.

It was incredible, sometimes, when he thought about how much ten years could change.


	116. listen now i'll give you all of me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any dick can roll up in a suit, but only I would know what really moves you

They're walking down the beach - full of rocks, primarily, way different than the beaches that Chris left in California - and it's a little dreary over the horizon, but it's a perfect day. Up ahead, Zach is wearing cut offs that are a size too tight, and a hoodie Chris remembers digging out of a laundry basket when Zach still lived in Silverlake.

Chris is trying to keep up, his crocs a little slippery on the wet, pointy rocks. He can see where their destination is - up ahead, there's a flat rock that juts out from the riverbank, perfect to settle on and have a quick smoke.

They're playing Chris' favorite game, Hypotheticals, both of them a little breathless as they stumble over the rocks. Chris doesn't know about Zach, but he's the first to admit he hasn't done any cardio since the last Trek was filming.

"That doesn't make any sense," Zach calls back over his shoulder, pausing as he drops down onto a flat rock bed. Chris tries to pick the pace up, and jumps down beside Zach. Chris raises one eyebrow, and reaches out for Zach's hand. They're on a beach on the coast of upstate New York; he hardly thinks that the paparazzi will be coming from them.

Chris grins and swings their hands together a little bit, "It doesn't have to make sense. That's the beauty of a hypothetical question. You can give a hypothetical answer."

"I think it should still make sense," Zach says, not sounding convinced as they approach the flat rock. He reaches up and slides his sunglasses up onto the top of his head. "Hypothetically, do you think you can climb that rock, or do you want a leg up?"

Letting go of Zach's hand, Chris frowns and shrugs his backpack off. He probably could scale this thing if he wanted to, but he would rather Zach do the work for him.

"Leg up," He answers, already reaching for the side of the rock.


	117. get off your throne, i want you alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pinto prompt? King and consort, maybe?

Chris never had much of a thing for ceremonies, until the day that Zach walked through the door and his entire universe was upended on one side.

Now, Chris feels his blood pumping at the mere mention of a ceremony getting penciled into the theoretical schedule. Any excuse to see Zach in his uniform, crushed velvet and gold, jet black hair, blue shirt buttons, tanned skin. Soft, untouched looking - until Chris got him home after, where things would quickly unravel.

Everything here will be Chris' kingdom one day, something that both excited and depressed him. Everything here will be Chris' kingdom, the one that he will someday share with Zach.


	118. i think you're dope i'm just trying to keep it real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics: So goodnight moon and goodnight you/ When you’re all that I think about/ All that I dream about/ How’d I ever breathe without/ A goodnight kiss from goodnight you

It's their nightly ritual.

Zach, despite all reports to the contrary, still smokes before bed. It's his dirty little secret that lives and dies at their bedroom doorway; Chris has taken to washing his face and poking at his hairline in the mirror while Zach stands outside on the bedroom porch, smoke curling out of his mouth as he checks his email for the last time that night.

Inevitably Chris always beats Zach to bed, gets in while Zach is wistfully taking his last drag and stubbing the tiny, filter only butt out in the ash tray carefully hidden beneath the ledge. Usually only the bedside lamps are on, maybe the TV if Zach's been watching the late night lineup, so Chris will slide into bed, glasses on, tired and rummaging for the optimal pillow angle.

He's usually settling down right as Zach is coming back inside, looking a little sheepish despite himself as he lets the porch door click closed behind him, the smell of smoke trailing in - more so if it's warm, humid outside. Chris will take his glasses off as Zach starts to unbutton his shirt, crossing the room to the bathroom that Chris just wandered out of, lights still on.

Zach subscribes to maintaining a laundry list of habits, a number of which include his clothing and the way that he handles said clothing. So, at night, Zach strips all of it off and hangs it back up, or lays it across the towel rack to be re-worn the next day, or the next week. Inevitably he steps over the clothes Chris had been wearing before he'd stepped into the shower, disregarded on the mat and still slightly damp from being stepped back onto when he was getting out.

Teeth, face, skin, Zach hits the bathroom light and closes the door just as Chris is inevitably sinking deep in the covers. Sometimes one of Chris' hands will flap around until it finds the remote; usually this is around the same time that Zach is coming to stand at his side of the mattress, thighs against the bed frame as he reaches for his edge of the blanket.

"I'm tired," Zach will say, sometimes, or other times, nothing at all. Something quiet, something true, something that will sum up the easy thoughts flowing through his head. I'm excited about tomorrow, I'll miss you when you leave, I can't believe it's already the end of the month.

Chris, blankets up to his chin, hair matted on top of his hair, always looks so bright against the white sheets. The true color of his eyes: no contacts to slightly throw the light. Usually Zach smiles, then, a little bit indulgent despite himself and the New Years resolution he always makes to not be.

"I had a powernap on the couch," Is what Chris says tonight. It's always off-handed, usually a little bit strange. Something from the confines of Chris' brain, something that usually wouldn't make it past the filter. When Zach got the master key, those filters shut down. "Had a hamburger. Back to sleep."

Getting into bed, Zach flips his light off before he's even fully beneath the blankets. Efficiency is the name of the game; Zach flips his cellphone face down, too, so it won't wake him up in the middle of the night or in the morning.

"You cooked a burger? Where was I?" Zach asks, voice soft as he settles down, stretching one arm across the bed. Comparatively he is dark, dark hair and tanned skin, like an anchor against the sheets; Chris is the bright blue ocean.

Chris makes an 'I don't know' face and rolls in, looking a little rumpled already as he rests his cheek against the inside, soft part of Zach's bicep.

"It was a shame burger," Chris continues, eyes drifting closed slowly as he tugs the blanket up to his shoulder. Zach reaches over Chris' body to shut his bedside light off, too. "I ate it standing over the sink."

That makes Zach grin, wide and warm as the room plunges into darkness. Chris' phone is still lit up on the table, it casts a strange, intimate blue glow over both of their profiles. It isn't often that you see someone else in this type of light.

"Chez Pine," Zach intones, voice soft and jokingly deep, as he settles back down into his pillow. After a beat he rolls forward an inch, and navigates towards Chris' mouth in the darkness.

As their mouths touch, Chris' phone dims and proper darkness wraps over them like another blanket.

"Goodnight," Chris whispers, biting at Zach's chin a little bit before he turns his face against the pillow, and lets the night wrap him up.


	119. ultraviolet ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd never done anything like this before.

He's never done anything like this before.

Chris actually feels like he's dying. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, is about as far as he can get with his vocabulary at this particular juncture in his life, as he throws his head to the side and tries to wipe the sweat pouring down his face off and onto the curve of his shoulder.

Whoever invented SoulCycle is a motherfucker and should be taken into the back and shot. His realizes his chest is hot on the inside as he pushes his weight onto the balls of his feet and lifts up off the seat. Luckily he's bolted to the floor because there's so much sweat dripping in his eyes he's pretty sure he'd drive off a cliff if he were to be exposed to some kind of mountainous outdoor range.

The cycle instructor doesn't even seem to be a real person. He introduced himself as "Zach" about thirty minutes ago, and he still looks the exact same as he did then, except now he's in motion. He's barely breaking a sweat, his hair still looks like a normal person's hair, and his clothes have not yet begun to betray him.

Chris feels like he probably looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical outlet. If he were in Zach's position right now, he wouldn't even be able to catch his break long enough to bark orders.

"Fuck," He whispers to himself, dropping back down onto his seat. For some reason Zach chooses that exact moment to look over - and when he sees the expression on Chris' face, he grins.

Looking back, Chris figures that moment is probably where it all started.


	120. no silver or no gold could dress me up so good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "i don't know if this is a good idea."

"I don't know if this is a good idea," Zach murmurs, voice low and quiet, one hand light on Chris' hip as Chris crowds him into the corner of the kitchen, close enough to smell the smoke fresh on his breath.

Chris licks the corner of his lip and laughs softly when Zach hits the edge of the counter, and then the furthest kitchen wall a few steps later. He replies, "It's never a good idea. It's never a good idea."

"I can hear their conversation," Zach manages to say, before Chris is kissing him softly, secretly, the kind of kiss that you hope nobody ever finds out about because everything ran so much deeper than your lips.

Another kiss, Chris' other hand on Zach's opposite hip. Their respective significant others continue to chat in the attached dining room, a glass pane door the only thing from separating their two very different conversations. Chris' girlfriend is talking about the weekend getaway they recently took to Venice Beach; Chris remembers texting Zach the entire time.

"If you told me to, I would," Chris whispers, pulling away enough to look at Zach's eyes.

Zach tilts his head back against the wall and swallows. He can hear her talking about the weather, the local people, the beaches. She's from the east coast; she knows rain and bad manners and rocks. He takes a breath in, he takes a breath out.

"I know," Zach says, and it isn't 'cut the cord,' but it's close.


	121. you are you are the love of my life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First sentence meme: I'm not letting you go now, don't worry.

"I'm not letting you go now, don't worry," Zach says, in the same way that anyone else might says 'the laundry is done' or 'we need more gas.' The words are so simple, but they still make the pit of Chris' stomach spark like fire and kerosene.

Unable to articulate the feeling, Chris half smiles and flicks his little fortune slip across the floor, over the tin containers they've been picking food out of for the last twenty minutes.

"That's not what Shun Lee's Palace is telling me," He says, as Zach smirks and picks the little piece of paper up.

Zach reads it silently, and then laughs and repeats out loud, "True love doesn't have a happy ending. That seems..."

"Bleak? Desolate? Austere?" Chris supplies, rolling forward from sitting cross-legged, to resting on his hands and knees.

He starts to shuffle over to Zach as Zach laughs, eyebrows raising as he watches Chris make his way across the wooden floor.

"Keep saying words," Zach grins, flicking the fortune back at Chris' face.


	122. come and meet the queen of cake and cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Neighbors AU? :)

"Oh my god, are you okay?" He exclaims, voice laced with obvious panic and probably a few octaves higher than he'd intended as he jumps out of the drivers side of his car. "Fuck!"

Behind the car, Zach lays on the sidewalk, arms and legs sprawled, his bicycle still in one piece - albeit bent - and half on top of him. The pain blooming in his calf doesn't bum him out half as much as his freshly bent back wheel does.

"I'm okay," He lies, pushing himself up onto his elbows as he watches the guy who hit him drop to his knees, hands already on Zach's shoulder and side. "I hit my head, but I'm okay."

The guy swears under his breath and starts trying to help Zach sit up into an upright position. It's a little awkward, as one of Zach's legs are still tangled in the bike's body, and the guy is all hands.

"I'm so sorry," He continues, shaking his head and brushing the sidewalk dust off of the back of Zach's hoodie. "I just moved in a few weeks ago, this is not really... I don't usually hit people with my car, I'm just taking all these med classes and I haven't really been getting enough sleep and.."

Zach laughs, half smiling as he watches the guy wind himself up.

"It's alright, for real. I wouldn't want you to cut me open, though," He tries to joke. It doesn't really fly, given by the blank, still moderately panicked look the guy gives him. Zach extends one hand, and says, "I'm Zach, I live in the apartment building right over there."

Relief rushes over the guys face as he shakes Zach's hand and says, "Chris, I, uh, live here. In this house."

"Got it," Zach laughs, a little entertained as he starts to get to his feet. His bike is definitely going to need repairs. Maybe he can hammer it out. Well. Maybe not, actually. He'd need to start by buying a hammer. "I'll let you get to class, man. If you're crossing any roads today, don't forget to look both ways."

As Zach picks his bike up and smiles, Chris smiles back, trying to flatten the hair at the back of his head with one hand.

"I'll remember that," Chris nods, voice soft.


	123. write your name across my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chris and zachary have a lazy weekend together. lots of deep conversations in between rounds

"That is fucking debatable, man," Chris laughs, kicking at Zach's bare feet with his own.

Across the couch and leaning up against the opposite arm, Zach makes an offended face over his takeout chinese container and chopsticks, and jabs his toes back, arguing, "It's not debatable, you just have terrible taste. Ask anyone what the best one is, and they'll say - "

"It's not The Road Warrior," Chris interrupts, chewing loudly on his lo mein. It's one of Chris' worst habits - whenever they go out for dinner, Zach feels like he's eating with a wild animal or a small child who has yet to learn how to eat in the presence of other human beings. "The best Mad Max was in fact, Mad Max. You can't beat that shit, man. One of the best car chase scenes ever."

Rolling his eyes, Zach picks through the bottom of his takeout container, and pokes Chris with his feet again when he catches Chris flipping Noah a not so surreptitious bite of his food.

"What," Chris grins, a noodle hanging out of his mouth. "You must be seeing things cause I definitely did not do anything worthy of a kick."

Zach watches Noah cough the noodle back up onto the carpet, the very expensive carpet that they recently argued about in a West Elm, and then looks back at Chris pointedly.

"Now that's debatable," He says, which, pfft, Chris thinks.

They both lapse into silence as they finish eating their food, Chris groaning and stretching one arm out to slide the container back onto the coffee table. It's covered in pieces of the brown paper bag they'd ripped the food out of, and the plastic bag the brown paper bag had come in. Chris has never met food more packaged than chinese takeout.

"I'm ready to go back to bed," Chris announces, reaching for their fortune cookies. He throws Zach's across the couch, and then cracks his own open. It says your heart will soon skip a beat. "Well, that's foreboding."

Zach takes the last bite of his food and then swings both feet off the couch, sitting upright so he can clear the coffee table off, and pack all of the garbage together.

"What does it say?" He asks, glancing over. Chris reads it off, mouth still full of cookie, and then Zach laughs, and then says, "I'll fuck the beat right out of it before it has a chance to skip."

Grinning, Chris flicks the paper slip in Zach's general direction. His favorite thing about their relationship is that he gets unlimited, unrestricted access to Zach's unbelievably dirty mouth. To everyone else, he's the proper looking and smart sounding guy in a tailored suit. To Chris, he is deliciously disgusting and foul.

"Is that a promise or a threat?" Chris laughs.

The look that Zach levels him with says 'both.'


	124. i'm just a j j j j junkie for your love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> au where zach's dog sets them up 101 dalmatians style

"Oh my god, this is so embarrassing," Zach says, voice beginning to border on flustered as he tries to turn around, so they aren't pressed quite so close together.

It doesn't really work as well as Zach was intending it to. 

Instead, they just end up pressed butt-to-dick, Zach's ass being the one in question, pressed to Chris', uh, front, as Noah continues to run in circles around them. Whoever said dogs were a man's best friend had clearly never had something like this happen to him.

"Ow, the leash is kinda cutting into my legs," Chris laughs, twisting against Zach's back. When Zach woke up this morning, he never would have thought he'd spend his lunch hour pressed up like this against a stranger. "What's his name again?"

Zach swears and tries again to untangle the leash, but it's totally a losing battle. Noah continues to run in circles around them, and Zach swears off ever buying a retractable leash again.

"Noah," Zach answers, frowning. They're on grass, and it's a pleasantly dry day for April. Maybe if they just... "Maybe we should just..."

As Zach is about to recommend 'drop down to the grass in a careful and considerate manner,' Noah takes off in the opposite direction. As he runs, both Zach and Chris lose their balance at the same time, and tumble to the ground.

"Ow, fuck, jesus christ," Zach swears, as Chris lands in a heap on top of him. He's pretty, but he weighs a ton and feels like he has six different sets of elbows. "Are you alright?"

Chris manages to roll to the side, so they're spooning against the grass. Luckily, the movement loosened the leash a little bit, so they're able to wiggle around and get their legs out.

"I'm fine, are you?" Chris asks, as he rolls to the side and finally gets himself free of Noah's web. Being a total asshole, Noah wanders over and wags his tail, ears perking at the sight of Zach sitting on the floor.

Zach rubs his shoulder, where he took most of the weight when they fell, and lies, "I'm okay. Sorry... about that. I've, uh... he's never..."

"Don't worry about it," Chris smiles, sitting up and looking over at Zach. Something about the way the sun hits Chris' eyes in that moment will stick with Zach forever. "I'm pretty sure that you owe me a coffee now, though."

Smiling a little, Zach ducks his head, and nods. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear maybe Noah did that on purpose.


	125. i only see you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I can't believe you tweeted that"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This month marks the five year anniversary of my Pinto prompt fics. Wiiiiild!

Zach is sitting cross-legged on Chris' couch, one elbow pointed up at an awkward angle as he fights with the couch arm. This particular piece of furniture has been an ongoing point of contention between them since Chris bought the stupid thing: it looks like it belongs in a doctor's office lobby, or some business magazine spread from 2010.

"Let's go out for dinner," Chris announces, coming in from his bedroom, damp hair, fresh out of the shower. He has a towel balled in one hand, a total afterthought of the entire showering process, and brings it up to haphazardly mop at the droplets of shower water still dripping down his neck. "I don't feel like cooking."

Without thinking about it, Zach lifts up his phone - he'd been secretly reading dirty AskReddit threads - and snaps a photo of Chris' never-ending presence in his life. Currently, wet.

"Sure," Zach acquiesces easily, already trying to work himself back up from the couch. It isn't even fun to fuck on. "Let's get Italian."

*

Later that night, Chris is bitching about how much food he ate as Zach brushes his teeth in the attached bathroom.

"Next time I eat a half a loaf of bread, take the other half away from me," He says, even though they both know he's totally fucking lying. He kicks his feet underneath the blankets - it's fucking hot in here, jesus christ he's getting carb sweats - and goes back to the article he was reading. For some stupid reason his mother sent him a link to the early warning signs of heart attack, like she doesn't know Chris and his tendency for hypochondria.

As he's scrolling down the list - he's had all of these symptoms, technically not at the same time, the other day his arm did hurt though - a text message from his assistant slides down from the top of the screen. Without thinking about it, he taps it and rocks his feet from side to side under the blankets as his iPhone creaks from one screen to another.

"What the fuck," He blurts, just as Zach is coming out of the bathroom, sweatpants low on his hips, chest bare. He raises an eyebrow at Chris as Chris boggles at his phone - a screen cap of one of Zach's recent Twitter posts, like, this afternoon recent - and asks, voice a little hysterical, "I thought I was exempt from your varying levels of interaction with social media?!"

Zach shrugs, like Chris is asking him out for frozen yogurt, and pushes the bathroom door closed behind himself.

"I didn't think it was a big deal," He says, sounding honest.

Oh my god I just felt a pinch in my left arm, Chris thinks, beginning to edge towards full blown hysteria. He groans, "I can't believe you tweeted that!"


	126. one good girl worth a thousand bitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lyric prompt: no wealth, no ruin, no silver no gold, nothing satisfies me but your soul

This is his favorite part of the whole thing.

It's a secret, hidden part of his life. He and Zach don't live together; they've never promised one another anything. They have separate houses and two sets of dishware, and Zach has his life in New York, something that decidedly does not include Chris.

But this - this is something that only they share, something that nobody else will ever understand except the two of them. These are the moments that make everything else worth it. These are the moments that will satisfy Chris' soul forever, that will make him less afraid of a lonely life when he is 40, 50 or 60, and Zach is entire lifetimes away.

In the dark of the hotel room, Zach feels closer than he's ever been. Chris has been lost in this bed for what feels like forever, completely adrift, content with the feeling of Zach's body pressed up against his. An anchor, the feeling of being complete.


	127. he says to be cool but, i'm already coolest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: zach likes to bite

he says to be cool but, i'm already coolest

"I don't know what you're talking about," Chris lies - something that he's not very good at doing - as he fumbles his coffee cup and almost knocks his bean grinder over.

Beside him, Katie is half boggling and half grinning as she jabs at his side and tries to drag down the neck of his shirt. Clearly he should have erred towards the "turtleneck" side of his closet when getting dressed this morning.

"What are you, like... fifteen?" She cackles, enjoying every minute of Chris fumbling under the pressure of her teasing as he blushes and can't quite bring himself to make eye contact. "Do you want me to cover this one up with foundation? Just like that time I helped you in the eighth grade?"

Chris shoves her cup of coffee across the counter, thankful it's still only three fourths full as she loved to drown her shit in cream, and snaps, "Oh whatever like you didn't fuck the only male cheerleader in the whole school underneath the bleachers."

"I didn't fuck him," She laughs, raising her eyebrows as she reaches for the coffee cup and spins the handle towards herself and changes the subject back to Chris' blotch of shame. "Either way - Chris, that's not a hickey. That's cannibalism."

Grimacing at her, Chris really tries to convey how much he wishes Katie would burst into flames right then and there, as he picks his coffee cup up and takes a sip. This isn't as good as the beans he picked up last week. Fuck.

"Why are you even here?" He asks, watching in disgust as she empties the last few inches of the cream container into her mug, and then reaches for the sugar. She spoons in two massive heaps, and then brings the mug up to her mouth. "Don't you have anyone else you can terrorize?"

She shakes her head, mouth full of coffee, and goes to reply just as Zach strolls into the kitchen.

"Morning," He greets, still dressed in his pajamas and glasses as he walks over to where the two of them are standing in the morning sunshine at the counter. "I want one."

A smile spreads across Katie's face as Chris silently reaches for a third mug. She holds it together for about five seconds before she blurts, "Nice work."

"Thanks," Zach replies, not missing a beat as he turns to the fridge to get his almond milk. As an afterthought he adds, "You want one too?"


	128. started from the bottom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mafia fic: what was zach doing all night before he snuggled up in bed with chris in the last chapter?

The thing Zach likes most about Max is that he doesn’t ask stupid fucking questions.

If Zach were with anyone else right now - say, Dave, or his mother, or even Chris - Zach would be the ringleader of a neverending parade of curiosities and clarifications. But Dave is waiting in the car, his mother is an entire state away, and Chris is at home preparing for Zoe’s charity event, so it’s just he and Max, silent, quiet, moving in the night.

“The car will be around within the minute,” Max says, voice hushed as they continue down the dark alley. It’s wet, a strangely wet night for New York, and it’s making everything glitter. Zach sees the mirrored reflection of the neon bar sign across the road in a puddle as they walk by, boots silent against the concrete ground.

He clears his throat, and continues to peel the leather gloves off of his hands. They smell like blood, both of them saturated, that fresh and metallic tang trailing along behind them as they make their way to the next block. Max is still wearing his.

“That’s fine,” Zach replies, licking his lips. As they continue to walk, Max holds an opened plastic bag out for him, and Zach deposits the leather gloves inside.

This isn’t their usual kind of job - Zach usually doesn’t work for less than 50k - but it’s a favor and that means a lot. It means that the blood on his hands will be worth it, if it’s paying off a debt or creating a new one for someone else.

*

Thirty minutes later and halfway across town, Dave rents them a motel room by the hour under a fake name.

Zach spends twenty minutes standing naked in the shower, rinsing himself off with a strong industrial cleaner. It isn’t his usual cleanser, but tonight it’s what works.


	129. come on down to florida i got somethin for ya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Mafia Fic: A peek into the domestic side of the mob boss and hubby life?

Zach walks over and comes up behind Chris, wrapping his arms around Chris’ waist from behind.

“Max dropped a folder off for you this morning,” Chris continues, holding Zach’s crossed hands on his waist with one of his own hands as he reaches with the other to turn the oven on. “It’s on your desk.”

Zach makes a noise and presses his face into Chris’ shoulder, tightening his arms around Chris’ waist as they continue to stand there, until Chris has added all of his ingredients into the mixing bowl, and then poured the mixture into a muffin pan.

The oven still hasn’t fully pre-heated, so he turns around in Zach’s grip, smiling as he reaches up to wrap both arms around Zach’s shoulders. He immediately notices the massive red welt growing underneath Zach’s eye, a small split to the skin but nothing that looks too deep to Chris’ initial glance.

“Ow,” Chris says, cringing a little bit on Zach’s behalf as he reaches up to press at the edge of it with the pad of his thumb. It’s definitely going to turn into a black eye sooner than later.

As Chris touches the mark Zach closes his eyes, but he doesn’t cringe. He lets Chris check out the cut until he seems satisfied, moving his hand to trail down the side of Zach’s face instead. Chris rests his hand on Zach’s shoulder and flickers his gaze over Zach’s face, trying to see if there are any other marks he’d missed last night.

“It’s just a bruise,” Zach says, trying to placate Chris’ concerned face as he reaches up to brush his fingers through the hair on the side of Chris’ head. Chris frowns but doesn’t say anything, just rubs his thumb back and forth over Zach’s shoulder until Zach finally affords him a smile before leaning in to kiss him.

Chris lets Zach kiss him, their mouths pressing together, until he pulls away an inch, just far enough back to open his eyes and murmur, “Just be careful.”

“Promise,” Zach replies instantly, the word quick to fall off of his lips as he presses them back against Chris’. Chris doesn’t believe it for a second, but he relaxes against Zach again, sliding the palms of both hands over the slopes of Zach’s shoulders, down his arms and then around to his waist.


	130. but if you send for me, you know i'll come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mafia!au prompt: someone kidnaps chris, zach gets him back.

Chris can feel his heart beating everywhere.

It’s in his hands, his stomach his chest and his throat. He no longer feels real, just this mass of synapses firing over and over, so much adrenaline flooding through his body that all he can think about is running. Not saving himself, not living, not escaping, just running. Moving his legs and his body and his arms. That’s it. That’s where the thoughts stop.

They’ve tied him up, gagged his mouth tight enough that he can’t wiggle free in the way Zach taught him to. His hands are bound at the small of his back, and that binding is tied to the chair. His feet and legs are tied in three different places; he knows he isn’t getting free alone. Short of being able to create fire with the power of only his mind, this chair is where he is living and dying.

He’s been here for days. They haven’t fed him. They haven’t given him water. He was hungover for the first day, and he’s been drydrated since. By the third day he’d stopped throwing up. He can’t figure out why he’s still here.

Groaning, he drops his head to the side and lets his chin rest against his chest. They’ve got half a dozen men watching him, one on either side. He’s the most vaulable thing in this warehouse, and Chris has heard rumors that they’ve been trafficking stolen artwork from France. He closes his eyes, heart still pounding, and thinks about sleeping. Falling asleep, in his bed or in the boat or beside Zach, anywhere but in this chair.

He’s either almost passing out or falling asleep when there are a series of loud noises. Gunfire, a bang, the sound of breaking wood and metal slamming against itself. Chris is slow but he gets his eyes open, head coming up as the door busts open and gunfire breaks out directly in front of him.

No matter how many times he hears gunfire - how many times he fires a gun at the shooting range - it never prepares him for the real sound of a gun going off. It’s so loud and so sharp and piercing he flinches, trying to curl in on himself against the chair.

All of a sudden someone is beside him, hands on his leg and his arm, trying to undo the ties.

“Are you hurt?” It’s Thomas, voice steady but loud, as his fingers work over Chris’ bindings.

Chris shakes his head and then nods - he doesn’t know. He swallows, and then asks, voice almost inaudible, “Zach?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Thomas replies, getting his arm around the back of Chris’ neck as they move out of the room.

He gets one glance back - isn’t sure what makes him do it - morbid curiosity, maybe. Chris gets one glance back over his shoulder, just long enough to focus through the gunfire to see Zach, gun pressed to the forehead of one of the men who had been babysitting Chris. Chris barely gets his eyes closed in time for Zach to pull the trigger.


	131. cause i love my papi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since you've sort of touched on the other two of my prompts for other people... -Zach being super protective during some event.

They're at a charity event - they're always at a charity event, actually, because Chris has largely transitioned out of events sponsored by Grey Goose and various brands of tequila - and for the first time in a long time, Zach actually has the opening in his calendar to attend.

It's a little strange, actually, having both Thomas and Max here too when Chris is used to just Thomas shadowing him at these kinds of things, but Zach's hand is on the back of his neck and by the time they're by the bar that's all that he can think about.

"This is my old man," Chris jokes, as he's introducing Zach to one of the other socialite type girls he's always bumping into at these events - Kristen. "Zach, this is Kristen, Kristen, Zach."

They exchange pleasantries, and Chris can't help but notice the way that she eyeballs Zach's hand on him, fingers curled around the side of his neck, thumb pressed flat against his skin. She seems sidetracked, caught up in the presence of Zach touching him in such an obvious way - something that is so normal to Chris.

Half an hour later, they're sitting in a booth - Zach with his gin and tonic, Chris with his double vodka soda. Chris is on the inside, almost hidden in the plush leather seats behind Zach's profile. Zoe and Marco are sitting with them, something that puts Chris at ease as Zach and Marco have known each other for years.

Chris watches Zach talk and move, then accidentally catches eyes with Thomas, across the crowded room but clearly standing right in front of the donation bar. Thomas half smiles at him and then looks away, over towards where a blonde debutante is wolfing down champagne.

So tonight isn't purely business, then.

Marco and Zach are talking about a news story that had been in the papers earlier, some crime syndicate stealing a number of priceless artifacts from a museum in Germany. They both tisk and wonder what the world is coming to before catching eyes and exchanging quiet, short smirks.


	132. f.r.i.e.n.d.s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm clearing out all my old unfinished fics and this guy was just sitting there!

The last thing Zach had said to him before he semi-permanently-but-mostly-permanently moved to New York had been, “Even if you were the last person left on earth, I would not trust you as far as I could throw you.”

The disdain in his voice had been pretty evident. Chris had thought that had been a little dramatic. Especially since they had only had sex the three times.

Alright, four. Almost five. Definitely no more than six times.

Chris saves the text as a screencap in the photo album of his phone, just to remember the look that had been on Zach’s face the last time they had seen one another.

~

“You are so fucking queer,” Zoe tells him one day, when they run into one another at a foundation event and she has the grace and dignity to punch Chris in the shoulder with the same hand that’s wrapped around her clutch.

Grimacing, Chris rubs his upper arm through the sleeve of his loaned suit jacket, and groans.

“Not you too,” He says, nodding a half-assed captain’s wave with his free hand to a pretty brunette who walks by. He had met her at the pre-event, she had checked his name off of some kind of seating chart and pointed him towards the table he was scheduled to drink at for approximately five hours.

Zoe punches him again, lighter this time, and scowls, “Yeah me too.”

“You know calling someone queer isn’t as politically correct as you think?” He tries for humor, letting both hands drop to his sides.

Her eyes flicker down his front, judging him, before she says, flippant, “Yeah well, I guess I just call it like I see him.”

“What do you want me to do,” Chris says, voice low, steady. His shoulders are reflexively bunching into his ears, his chin lowering to his chest as he leans closer, so near her face that he can see the gold flecks in her eyeshadow. “He isn’t here anymore. I fucked up, and he left.”

Zoe’s chin tightens, teeth grinding together as she stares up into his face, unwavering. 

“He was right about you, you know,” She says quietly, and Chris immediately damns their close friendship to hell. He licks his bottom lip, eyes finally closing as he takes a step back and rolls his shoulders.

Patting the cellphone in his jacket pocket in preparation of calling a cab, he finally says, “Yeah, well. Who would I be to exceed expectations?”

“Chris,” She says, as he turns away and heads towards the exit doors, making a point to smile at the polite brunette on his way out.

~

The next day he’s nursing the coffee he poured a shot of morning rum into over his kitchen sink as he debates Zoe’s words.

He wonders what Zach told her. Probably everything, the little fucker. Made Chris look like a raging asshole with a Maurice complex. Fuck.

Without thinking about it, he picks his cellphone up off of the kitchen counter, wipes the pad of his thumb over the drop of coffee that he managed to drip all too close to the speaker despite being an arm’s length away from the device. His stomach sinks, the coffee turning sour in his mouth as he navigates to his text messages, and has to scroll back two months just to read the last message Zach had sent him.

At first glance the screen was an archetype of what their communication had usually looked like, but between date stamps there was a two day long gap, finally followed by a hastily typed text message argument between what had been hour long phone calls. Chris pinches the bridge of his nose and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling.

It shouldn’t still hurt after all this time. But it did - and generally Zach was the first thing he thought of in the morning, and the last moments he replayed in his head before he fell asleep. Sometimes they were good memories - those generally hurt more - and other times it was just fragments of arguments, moments in their relationship where he had embarrassed himself, said things that had seemed brutally honest at the time but just made him feel like a complete tool now.

Chris taps the text message window, watching as the keyboard slides out the screen from underneath his thumb.

 _I’m just really sorry about everything. I wish things could have been different,_ he taps, slowly.

He drinks the rest of his coffee in a few, lukewarm gulps, and then sends the text message before he has a chance to change his mind. As soon as he does he regrets it, it makes him feel like he’s the one who broke first and he knows he should be stronger than that - especially after everything that happened - but it’s a necessary regret, and it’s done now.

All he can do is flip his phone screen down on the counter, even though a little voice in the back of his head says that Zach most likely won’t reply, if he even has the same number, and pour himself another mug of coffee.

He has scripts to go through and his mother keeps calling him and he’s got a rooted life on the west coast, damnit, Zach should have never expected him to trail across the entire goddamn continental United States just to shadow him to New York City and inevitably be forced to come out in a hail of political statements and incriminating paparazzi photos.

That just - it wasn’t a life that Chris wanted to be part of.

And he’s totally fine still living here, in Los Angeles.

Like, totally fine.

~

Chris is not entirely fine.

“I ran into your ex-boyfriend outside Letterman’s studio,” Olivia tells him, a month after he texts Zach and, admittedly, does not get a response.

Rolling his eyes, Chris tries to flag down the waitress. “He’s not my ex-boyfriend.”

“Whatever, you totally sunk your teeth all over him,” She says, biting four inches of breadstick into her mouth. Chris makes a disgusted face at her and she shrugs, goggling her eyes at him as she has the decency to cover up her mouth with one hand before she manages, “He wad totally fiding for informadion on you, b-t-dubs.”

The waitress sends him a smile across the crowded Italian restaurant, so Chris, sated, settles back into his chair, and readjusts the napkin covering his lap.

“Fishing for information is not something Zach would do,” He manages to say, even though he’s secretly wondering if Zach did in fact receive his text message and hadn’t changed his number. “Zach still hates you, anyway. You and Skitch.”

Olivia reaches for her glass of water and balks. “That was like ten years ago.”

“Try last year,” Chris levels, flicking a piece of bread stick off of the table top and at her face. “He was... not impressed.”

Throwing the piece of crust back across the table, Olivia smiles at the waitress as she approaches, and replies, “When was he ever?”

“You’re such a bitch,” He laughs, fondly, crumbling the bread stick between his thumb and pointer finger as the waitress reaches their table, her notepad folded and held delicately at her hip. The first thing Chris notices is the slim engagement ring wrapped around her finger.

Olivia kicks him a little under the table, and says, “Aw, honey, you’re always such a charmer.”

~

After dinner Olivia drags him back to Silver Lake, where he stands awkwardly to the side as she flirts with the guys in line at Cha Cha Lounge and promises them all a strip in the photo booth if they buy her drinks all night.

Chris knows she has more than enough money to buy her own booze, but can appreciate her game as she feels the lapels of their leather jackets and makes jokes about how big a couple of their belt buckles are. After a few minutes of this, Chris takes to smoking a cigarette and reading a Reddit thread he had started reading this morning while he had been waiting for his laundry.

This is why he is entirely unprepared when Zach’s bolded name drops down from the top of his screen, and he damn near lets go of the phone in his surprise.

It disappears before he can read it, and, heart beat thrumming, he takes a deep drag of his cigarette, clicks his screen off, and slides his phone back into his pocket.

“So are we drinking or what,” He says, sliding one arm around Olivia’s shoulders, smirking at the two guys standing in front of them as he does so.

~

The night quickly turns into a gongshow. It takes one song before Robin Thicke comes on and Olivia starts dancing on the booth table, ass dipping low as Chris laughs and tries to cover his face, and the other couple guys they’re drinking with cheer her on, moving drinks away from her heels as she grins down at them, hands sliding over her hips.

Chris finishes his drink just as someone from the bar sends over a round of shots, which is when Olivia bounces low on her heels, knees level with her jaw line as she snags her shot and tips it back, the front of her throat working as she swallows.

Goddamn, Chris thinks, stretching his legs under the table as he reaches for his own drink, muscle memory slipping back to the one night they had fooled around, back when Chris was still doing bit parts and Olivia was hosting TV segments about video games. They hadn’t slept together, because despite his reputation he was actually more into dick than pussy, and when Zach had come along pretty soon after that had been the end of that.

Chris throws back his own shot because now he’s thinking about Zach again. He needs about three more of these before he can look at the text message he got without his heart dropping down into his feet in sheer panic and terror.

“I’m gonna get some more,” He says to nobody in particular, already jostling his way out of the booth.

~

Two hours later Chris is leaning against a bike rack outside for support as he smokes his third to last cigarette of the pack.

He feels good about this now. He considers caving and signing up for one of the various social networks just so everybody can see exactly how good he is, but then he pauses for a moment to consider the technology and immediately dismisses it. His iPhone still only has the original Apple apps, one time he managed to reset all of the carrier data in his phone, and his mother is a better texter than he is.

A social network, especially if he finds himself in a similar state as this anytime soon, would most likely not be wise.

Someone comes out of the bar as he’s thumbing over to his text messages, and the burst of house music that swells out from behind the heavy entrance doors brings him back to reality, the beat swarming around his head despite the fact he’s purposely standing at the edge of the sidewalk.

“Okay,” Chris sighs to himself, rubbing at his eye with the curve of his hand. He feels the heat from the cherry of his cigarette as he does so, and takes another drag as an after thought, while the cigarette is still in close proximity to his face.

Then he opens Zach’s text message.

_do too. I’m happy now. I hope you are the same._

“Motherfucker,” Chris swears, snapping, launching his phone into the street before he really even knows what he’s doing. He hears the rate of his heart as a rhythm in both ears as he closes his eyes, the alcohol swimming through him, making him feel as though he is on a raft in the ocean.

Tilting his head back, Chris repeats the text message in his brain, and stares at the sky.

“Fuck me,” He finally says, shoulders slumping, heading back to the bar just as a remix of a 20s-swing song starts up.

It makes Chris feel uncomfortable and on edge and, like everything else lately, inevitably reminds him of Zach.

~

The next day Chris has to use his landline for the first time since he moved into his apartment.

If he were any less hungover, it would be embarrassing to explain why his previously iPhone is currently shattered into approximately a thousand pieces, but he isn’t - he nurses a bottle of orange Gatorade and half an energy bar while he’s on hold - and within an hour, the call center agent has a new phone in the mail for him, and has hit the self destruct button on the one he left to die in the middle of the street.

“Hey, while I have you,” He says, crinkling the wrapper of his granola bar. “Would it be possible to give me a totally new number?”

The girl makes an agreeable noise, and Chris hears her typing before she says, “We definitely can. Same area code?”

“You bet,” Chris grimaces, stretching out across the couch.

And just like that, Chris is one step further away from Zach’s circle, and, for a moment, he can’t help but feel better about himself.

~

The feeling doesn’t last long as inevitably all of the women in Chris’ life are lingering around for his blood, and apparently will not quit until he’s left in a gutter on the street, bruised, broken, and sobbing Zach’s name.

“That’s being a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Kristen frowns at him, but even her frown is almost a smile.

Chris fixes his gaze to the beam in his ceiling, and tugs the couch cushion a little tighter over his stomach.

“Me, dramatic?” He grumbles, flexing his bare feet. He’s been wearing sweatpants all day - Kristen didn’t comment on it, even though she had seen his slippers by the front door and given him a wary glance for their mere presence. “Did he tell you about the text?”

Kristen shifts from one foot to the other where she’s standing beside him on the couch.

“Of course he told me,” She finally says, voice stilted. Kristen is Zach’s friend - she had been before they’d met, before they’d slept together, and before they had made the uneducated decision to try the relationship hat out. After a moment of awkward silence she crouches down, pregnant belly a curve along the tops of her thighs. “Can I tell you something?”

Rolling his head to the side, Chris raises his eyebrows. “Have at it. Everyone else is.”

“He misses you,” She says, her voice clipped. Chris can’t help it, his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. She notices, of course, nodding as she frowns a little, clearly considering where she’s going with this before she says, voice careful, “I don’t know what his text message to you said, and I definitely don’t want to poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Chris folds his arms back up behind his head, and tucks them between the fold of his pillow. “But...”

“But,” She pauses again, looking at him very carefully, her eyebrows arched. “I know my friend. Zach was - is - really hurt. And when he told me that you texted him, I admit, I got pretty angry.”

Laughing a little bit, Chris says, “You got angry.”

“Yeah,” She nods, and now she’s laughing a bit too, even though her eyes look wet. “You didn’t deserve to hurt him anymore.”

Chris groans and sits up, throwing the couch cushion across the room as he gets up off of the couch, surprising Kristen.

“What about me?” He snaps, walking around the back of the couch, fingers of one hand knotted into the hair on the top of his head. “I lost something, too. I wasn’t the one who moved across the goddamn, fucking country, because he got his feelings hurt.”

Sighing, Kristen pushes herself up a few inches, just enough to slide backwards onto the edge of the coffee table.

“Please don’t,” She says, voice quiet. It catches Chris off guard enough to stop ranting for a beat. “I didn’t come over here to start a fight, or pour salt in old wounds, or, or...”

Chris throws his hands up into the air, and despite himself, yells, “What the hell are you here for, then? I haven’t seen you since he walked out - so why are you here? Why now?”

“You make Zach happiest,” She says, one hand settling over the curve of her stomach. Despite herself, she’s smiling a little bit with the corner of her mouth, her eyes warm. “At least you do when you’re not driving him totally insane. His words, not mine.”

Crossing his arms, Chris sighs, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She pauses, then finally says, “I know it’s been hard, but please don’t totally block him out of your life. New York doesn’t suit him, not without you.”

Chris half-smiles despite himself, then says, voice quiet, “That was really fucking gay.”

“I can make it gayer,” Kristen says, before a slow, wide grin creeps across her face. “Please just talk to him.”

Smile still dancing on his face, Chris looks at the hair on the top of his folded arms, and finally concedes, “Fine. I will.”

~

Before she leaves, Kristen texts him Zach’s contact card, which Chris nervously saves to his contacts. 

It still has the same Californian cell phone number that Chris is used to, but it also includes his New York local work number, an email address Chris has never seen him use before, and a street address for a unit on the west side.

Chris pretends not to notice that Zach’s contact photo is new, taken in a bar Chris has never seen before, Zach’s hair cut in a way that Chris has never run his hands through before.

“Thanks,” Chris says, voice quiet as he takes in the wealth of information Kristen has shared with him.

~

What Kristen doesn’t know is that the most valuable detail she has shared with Chris just happens to be the street address.

Chris packs that night, body a nervous mess as he throws a few t-shirts into his carry-on, the pair of wrinkled jeans he kicked off last night after staggering home from the bar.

If Zach wants New York, he can have it. But this time, Chris is not going down without a real fight.


	133. that goes in the butt bank

Zach’s thing has always been ass.

Some dudes were into muscular legs, or forearms, or dick, fuck, even good hair - not Zach. Zach lived and died by a good ass. Though he was flexible to said ass attributes (he used to say he’d never met an ass he didn’t like), his favorite is attached to one specific person.

He’s not sure if it’s because he likes Chris as package deal, or if his ass really is as delicious as Zach’s brain seems to think it is. He’s heard people comment on it, read magazine’s descriptions of it, hell, he’s seen girls and guys both look after it longingly. He doesn’t blame them.

“Zach, fuck,” Chris swears, almost dropping his beer. He manages to save it before it hits the floor or table top, and turns his head to the side to look at Zach knowingly. “Seriously?”

Grinning, Zach shrugs and presses his chin against Chris’ shoulder. They’re both a bit sticky because it’s actually been about a million degrees in Vancouver, and this bar does not have any kind of air ventilation.

“Yeah seriously,” He answers, lowly, squeezing Chris’ ass with his free-hand again.

They’re out for celebratory drinks to mark one successful week of shooting. Either Zoe, Karl and Simon don’t notice, or simply don’t care about the wolfish look on Zach’s face and the faint blush creeping up Chris’.

“Tina Belcher over here,” Simon says off-handedly, which means that Zach is less surreptitious than he originally thought.

Everyone cracks up laughing, but Zach just grins, squeezing again for good measure.


	134. but i can’t feel my face when i’m with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach "Quints" Quinto is popular in school. But when he lays eyes on that shy, kinda nerdy first-year, things change.

Being popular is everything Zach ever thought it would be.

He always has someone to hang out with, even if he’s eating lunch an entire period later than everyone else is. Someone’s always around to chat, to stand with him at his locker, to walk him to his car. Nobody makes fun of him for being gay, which he knows isn’t a luxury provided to the less popular kids.

His mom is real proud of him, he can see it in her face when he talks about the next social event he’s going to, and he knows she follows along with his exploits on Facebook. Thank god parents haven’t found SnapChat yet.

Nobody knows how lonely he is. It’s hard to be lonely when you’re popular. There’s always someone around: when you’re eating lunch, or standing by your locker, or walking to your car. But Zach is. He sees the faraway look in some of his friends faces when he talks; that’s nice, Zach, but let me tell you about what I did last night.

Zach longs for a connection that means something. He’s glad he’s graduating at the end of the year.

*

Zach is sitting on the quad drinking coffee and chatting with his friends.

Some of the boys from his group are playing a half-assed game of touch football on the field, a few girls are trying to study, and then there are Zach and Zoe, drinking Starbucks and gossiping. Zoe is picking little daisy weeds out of the grass to make a daisy chain crown.

That’s when Zach sees it. A new kid, someone he’s never seen before, hustling across the baseball court on the other side of the field. He’s dressed from head to toe in blue: blue hoodie, blue jeans, blue sneakers. The little detail Zach can see from here quickly cements itself in his brain.

As he’s opening his mouth to ask Zoe if she knows who the new kid is, the guy manages to snag the toe of his sneaker against the cement. He goes flying across the court, arms flinging out in front of him as his books go up into the air, loose leaf pages scattering everywhere.

The guys immediately start laughing, pausing their game of football to cackle and point. Zoe covers her mouth with both hands and watches as the guy pushes himself up with his palms on the warm concrete.

Zach is up and jogging across the field before he even realizes what he’s doing.

“Hey, are you okay?” He calls, as he hears his friends calling ‘Quints, what the fuck?’ from behind him.

The guy groans and bends over at the waist, swinging his arms around as he tries to collect everything before anyone else notices his tumble.

“I’m fine, fuck,” He swears, standing up. As he comes face to face with Zach he frowns, and reaches up to adjust his glasses.

Zach’s brain plays a clip show of every 90s teenage movie he’s ever watched on Netflix. It gets hung up somewhere around Rachael Leigh Cook in She’s All That. She was good in Josie and the Pussycats, too, Zach’s brain helpfully supplies.

“Uh,” Zach takes a step backwards as the guy gets the last two books picked up. As the guy stands up again, Zach offers, “I’m Zach.”

Grimacing into the sun over Zach’s head, the guy replies, “Yeah well, I’m late. See you later.”

*

Later, Zach will look back on that moment and realize that’s when his life changed forever. It was the fork in the road, and Zach inevitably chose Chris.


	135. and if they ask i’ll say, “i’m fine”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I can't live with you, but I die without."

Chris has never been attached to someone the way he is to Zach.

It’s... strange, and sometimes, it terrifies him. Somedays he can’t see himself ever growing old with Zach, sometimes he looks at Zach and thinks, “how the fuck is this supposed to work?”

But all the other times - the times that they aren’t arguing semantics, or fighting for lack of anything better to do - Chris can’t figure out how he would ever manage to live without him. He thinks about waking up in the morning with all of the bedsheets he rightly deserves, but he doesn’t really know what he’d do with all that extra mattress real estate.

He thinks about his kitchen pans, and what he would do if Zach wasn’t around to scratch them all up with the spatula. He thinks about his plants, and what he would do if Zach wasn’t there to overwater them every day.

Mostly, he thinks about his life, and what it would look like if there was a gigantic Zach shaped hole in the middle of it.

Well that just wouldn’t be very much fun at all.


	136. badlands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris is unable to resist Zach's luscious hair and finds oh so casual ways to play with it or even just gently tug at his hair.

“You’re fucking doing it again!”

Chris’ hand snaps back to his chest like he’s been burned; eyes wide, eyebrows raised, a small, secret smile twisted into his lips.

“I’m not doing anything,” He lies.

His answer absolutely scandalizes Zach, who’s mouth drops open, corners pinching into an amused grin as his eyebrows arch up his forehead.

“Liar!” Zach breathes, as Chris smooths his own palm down his chest. Nothing to see here, Chris just really loves a good knit... “Is this like... a thing for you?”

Chris can’t help the way his hand shoots out and smacks the back of Zach’s head, thumb cutting through Zach’s delicious hair like a knife through butter. Oh god Chris wants to smack him again, that made it even better.

“I don’t think the sound guy in the back heard you,” Chris grumbles, stepping over the arm of the couch and sinking into the cushion beside where Zach is sitting.

Zach is still staring at him with an intrigued expression on his face, even though he does look a little pissed Chris smacked him.

“I didn’t know it was a secret,” Zach finally intones, tipping his head back. His hair perfectly coifs over his forehead, and Chris finds his fingers crawling across the back of the couch towards it, skin itching toward Zach’s shoulder.

Finally, when there’s nowhere else to go, Chris’ palm moves from the couch to the curve of Zach’s shoulder instead.

“It’s not a secret,” Chris finally admits, rolling his tongue over his bottom lip as he slides his fingers into Zach’s hair. Zach is openly watching Chris’ mouth the same way Chris is watching his own fingers in Zach’s hair. “It’s just my thing.”

Zach’s eyes are hazy, brain clearly somewhere that isn’t here as he tilts his head back and whispers, “Yeah, okay.”


	137. he's blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pinto prompt: Chris demonstrates some of his masseur's best moves on Zach after a long day of shooting.

Zach’s skin stretches on beneath him like all of the great things in Chris’ life that he’s never been able to quantify. Zach still has Spock makeup on the back of his neck, right where his hair meets skin. A smudge like chalk on a classroom blackboard, like it has any right to be touching Zach at all.

Biting his bottom lip, Chris leans forward and shifts his weight from the backs of Zach’s thighs to his own knees. He leans forwards and smooths the heels of his palms over the warm skin that curves over Zach’s shoulders, a galaxy of dark skin and moles and freckles.

“That’s good, ugh,” Zach groans, resting his forehead where his wrists are criss-crossed on the pillows.

Chris watches the back of Zach’s head. Sometimes when he’s in a cab, he wonders what would happen if the driver veered into the incoming lane. Sometimes when he’s at his parents for dinner, he wonders if they’ve ever had sex on the kitchen table. And sometimes, when he has Zach like this, he wonders what it would feel like to grip Zach’s hips with one hand, and knot the other into Zach’s hair. He wonders what it would feel like, to have Zach like that, just for a second.

“You’re tight,” Chris says, voice soft and broken, just as Zach picks his head up off of his wrists and asks, “Is that my phone?”

Pressing his thumbs deeper into the tissue of Zach’s lower back, Chris shakes his head and arches backwards, trying to eye Zach’s phone sitting on the table a few feet away.

Miles.

“Just relax,” Chris whispers, closing his eyes and dropping his chin against his own chest. 

He digs deeper into Zach’s muscles, and desperately lets himself imagine, just for one more moment.


	138. if you wanna go to heaven you should fuck me tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blind item: zach got REALLY GAY during pride weekend NYC. can't go into much detail about it, but he was at a rooftop party, guys were hooking up all over the place with each other, lots of booze. ((non-blind item: just imagine chris flying in for that))

“Hooooooly fucking shit,” Chris laughs, as he takes the last step down into the sunken patio. He adjusts the beanie on his head, a little stretched out from being used as a makeshift sleeping mask on the plane, and looks around the immediate area curiously.

First of all, empty bottles of booze as far as the eye can see. From one side of the patio to the other, there are beer bottles, tequila bottles, cans of Red Bull... you name it, someone was drinking it. Beneath the layer of booze are the bodies of consumption. There are thin mattresses spread out all over the patio, as well, loaded with pillows and twinkling fairy lights. Atop the mattresses lay the tanned, naked bodies of those who had been lucky enough to receive an invitation to last night’s festivities.

“Zach?” Chris calls, laughing as he steps over two men who look like they passed out mid-fuck. He toes a crushed can to the side and continues along the makeshift path until he gets to Zach’s palace in the middle of the destruction.

He’s strung up a bunch of gauzy fabric, and there are more fairy lights cascading down to form a makeshift rooftop four poster bed. Behind his bed, the city is beginning to wake up, the sun just starting to peak over the top of the tall New York landscape.

Chris pokes through the fabric to get to the man inside the bubble, and sure enough, there’s Zach, naked except for a white sheet wrapped around his middle.

“Morning,” Chris greets, loudly, laughing as he kicks Zach’s bare foot.

Zach startles awake, eyes bright and red as Chris unceremoniously drops into the empty spot beside where Zach is laying.

“Have fun, honey?” Chris asks, toeing his shoes off.

Zach groans, deep in his throat, and throws half of his sheet in Chris’ direction as he rolls over onto his side and falls back asleep.


	139. morticia and gomez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One very drunk night the cast of Star Trek may or may not have played 7 minutes in heaven with Zach taking a picture of the hickey he gave Chris. And he will deny any teasing when asked him how good does Chris' bubble butt feel in his hands?

“What the fuck is _this_?!” Simon asks loudly, bursting out into laughter.

In the makeup chair beside him, Zach frowns and reaches for his phone, stretching the short distance between them easily. He snatches the iPhone out of Simon’s hand and narrows his gaze in the mirror.

“Swiping is like, a cardinal sin when someone offers to show you a picture on their phone,” Zach says, dimming the screen and setting it on the makeup counter. If he could he would storm out, but then he would have to come back and sit for another hour while they fixed his ears.

Simon is still dying laughing, totally red in the face as his makeup girl tries in vain to even out his skin tone.

Whatever, Zach thinks to himself as he kicks his sneakers up onto the counter and crosses his arms. He was kinda drunk when he took that picture, and he kinda forgot it was on there when he offered to show Simon the picture he took of a funny sign in Chinatown the other day. It said “Hearing Aids Aids Aids Aids.”

“I cannot believe you, man,” Simon finally sighs, leaning back in the chair and staring at himself happily as Zach blushes despite himself. “You both are ridiculous.”

Zach frowns at that, even though it’s kind of in compliment territory, which is very unlike Simon.

“It looked like a vampire bite,” Zach finally admits, which does nothing but send Simon into a cascade of laughter again.


End file.
